It has been less than two weeks since the tragic death of Diogo Jota, and Liverpool are playing their first preseason match. It has been an extremely emotional time in the interim as the players, staff, and supporters attempt to come to grips with the sudden loss of Diogo. There has been very little time and space to process and grieve as the business of football requires the club to begin preparations for the upcoming season.
As the Liverpool players step onto the pitch for their first preseason friendly and supporters fill the stands at Deepdale stadium (or watch from afar), a big question kicking around in my brain is “how should I feel while watching this”?
Liverpool manager Arne Slot provided his take on how he and the club are attempting to deal with the situation. There is no playbook for how to handle this type of a loss so Slot has suggested that everyone, players and supporters alike, take the moments as they come and and let the feelings flow rather than try to feel a particular way.
Nothing seems to be important if we think of what has happened. But we are a football club and we need to train and we need to play again, if we want it or not. What I’ve said to the players, I can say it here as well. It’s very difficult to find the right words because we constantly debate what is appropriate. What is appropriate in our actions? What is appropriate [for] what we have to say? Can we train again? Can we laugh again? Can we be angry if there’s a wrong decision? And I’ve said to them, maybe the best thing for us to do is handle this situation like Jota was. And what I meant with that is that Jota was always himself, it didn’t matter if he was talking to me, to his teammates, to the staff, he was always himself. So let us try to be ourselves as well. So, if we want to laugh we laugh; if we want to cry we’re going to cry. If they want to train they can train, if they don’t want to train they can not train. But be yourself, don’t think you have to be different than your emotions tell you.
Second of all, Jots was the player that if things were really, really, really difficult, I always looked at him and said, ‘Now we need something special from you.’ And he delivered so many times in those moments. I can come up with all of these moments, even before I was here he had many of these moments as well. So we are in a very difficult time, so let’s try to do what Diogo did so many times. If it’s so difficult then try a little bit harder or just keep on going and try to make it work.
The last thing is that he was the player in our team I would say that mainly with him it was all about the team. And not only the players; also, like I said, the staff. If we want to go through this period we need to do this together. You’ll know this because you told me – he selected a photo after we won the league against Tottenham and he wanted to have that photo in his house. He decided not to take one of himself, he decided to take one with us as the whole group, the whole staff in front of our fans. That probably tells us as a team and everyone around the world how much of a team player he was.
For me, it was very emotional to see the Reds run out on the pitch again, with supporters paying tribute to Diogo in song and players commemorating their friend with goal celebrations. The moment after the match, with the players and supporters together clapping and singing the Diogo song on repeat for a solid five minutes, was a very cathartic experience. It will probably be quite a while until it feels "normal" again, but it felt nice to know there was still joy in watching my beloved Reds.