I know I’m not unique in being taken to some upsetting and emotional places by the death of Diogo Jota.
We football obsessives process much about life generally through its prism. It’s always with us.
This week we can crawl back under its comfort blanket as the Champions League qualifiers start and the Scottish League Cup begins on the 12th. And that adds to the Euros which run for July, and the gold-plated toilet that is the Club World Cup. The EFL begins in the first week in August and we’re off again.
Is it any wonder we’re so emotionally and practically engaged with it and its players? That’s why Jota’s accident was felt so deeply. You have the players in your set in your mind as actors in the forthcoming drama and abruptly they’ve gone. And that’s not even as a Liverpool fan.
It’s so shocking when someone you’re familiar with, even a footballer who you somehow feel you know, passes away tragically.
I have to tell you, it doesn’t get any easier with the passing years, worse if anything. So I should be used to it by now. But it still seemed so terrible, unbelievably so.
When you get to my age, cultural and sporting heroes die at a regular alarming rate. I doubt I have ever cried as much as when George Best died. So much of my young life was tied up with Bestie and I wept for my childhood as much as for him.
People say it doesn’t make sense but what sense could it properly make? There is no meritocracy to existence. Being great at football doesn’t grant you a long life or a short life or…well, anything. It doesn’t help to know there is no logic or reason.
**READ: [Some should hang their heads in shame over the reporting on Diogo Jota tragedy](https://www.football365.com/news/mediawatch-diogo-jota-embarrassing-reporting)**
Any of us, at any time, could throw a seven and that’s that. You can’t go around fearing it so we swallow it down. ‘Not now, not now’, we tell ourselves. And it mostly isn’t, of course, at least until it is. That bloke in America who is trying to live forever has lost grip; this isn’t a game we can ever win.
As a species we seem at ease with thousands of souls dying in floods or from a rocket up the backside in the pursuit of some dubious cause, but if they are culturally significant to us, like footballers, it feels especially senseless and emotional. But we’re all the same. We cry the same tears, our souls are all twisted in the anguish and joy of existence.
When I had my stroke it was 5am on a Sunday morning. I don’t remember a lot of it, just a few glimpses. I recall it was the frostiest, coldest night of the year and all that guff about being ‘a fighter’ was proven irrelevant. I gave up my existence just like that, in a heartbeat, retreating into the little voice in my head and then nothing. I did briefly emerge into consciousness as a catheter was put in me and I thought I was on an alien spaceship, having my seed drained. It’s okay. You’re welcome, I can spare it. But it has taught me something.
Other people’s skill and kindness saved me and if I’d ever doubted that we are not islands unto ourselves, that proved it.
As the good wishes flooded in, though I was barely compos mentis and unable to even speak, the warmth of that humane energy fed my soul. As comparatively disabled as I am now, you learn to appreciate and celebrate everything. It happened to me for ‘no known reason’ according to the diagnosis. It wasn’t too many pies, too little exercise, too much Glen’s vodka. No reason. Probably a genetic inheritance. Though perhaps God is punishing me for listening to too much jazz-rock.
Ironically, I’m happier now, because when you’ve been to the edge, you take nothing for granted. It’s sh\*t of course but happiness and consciousness is in the mind, not the legs or arms.
Of course you can’t appreciate a footballer like Jota just in case they die an early death. You can’t live like that, but an appreciation of the fragility of life should always be factored into our responses. I know I’ve been made to confront it all and life is better for it. Warren Zevon, a musician who lived a wild life in the hedonistic LA of the 70s and 80s, died of an incurable cancer. His advice? ‘Enjoy every sandwich.’ And that’s right, both literally and metaphorically.
His death has made me confront these issues. As someone pointed out, [**it doesn’t put everything in perspective**](https://www.football365.com/news/mailbox-diogo-jota-tragedy-doesnt-put-football-perspective-arsenal-transfer-rodrygo-martinelli). If anything it shows how deeply football eats into our lives and brings us together. But perhaps it should make you appreciate everything and everyone you love in every moment. Wake up from your slumbers of immortality and assumptions that this is forever and there’ll always be more, because at some point, there won’t be.
Don’t take anything for granted, not a thing. It’s all just a phase, everything and everyone comes and goes at some point. It hurts and upsets but there’s nothing we can do. It is our lot.
Football teaches us to leave it all out on the pitch. Don’t let anything be unsaid because, as far as we know, we only get one go at this, so live every day as if it’s a cup final.