**_LONDON_**; ‘You’ll never walk alone’ welcomed Liverpool for their first pre-season friendly. But this was not an anthem of excited celebration and the stage was not Anfield. This was Deepdale, home of second tier Preston, and the chorus was a poignant tribute to the memory of Diogo Jota.
The Portugal forward died in a car crash in Spain along with his brother Andre Silva 11 days ago to the distress of team-mates and fans. His number 20 has been retired across all the club’s teams in his honour and both teams stood in a minute’s silence before kickoff.
Some 6,000 Liverpool fans travelled the 50km to fill the stand named after Bill Shankly – who had been a hero at Preston as player and then manager before becoming a Liverpool legend. Preston captain Ben Whiteman laid a wreath in front of the travelling Kop who bore flags, placards and shirts bearing Jota’s name. They sang, continuously, their song in honour of the man who scored the first goal of the Arne Slot era almost a year ago.
Slot said: “If we want to laugh, we laugh; if we want to cry, we’re going to cry. If the players want to train they can train, if they don’t want to train they can not train. We will always carry him with us in our hearts, in our thoughts, wherever we go.”
The manager’s delicate task is honouring the past and preparing for tomorrow and a first competitive outing against Crystal Palace in the FA Community Shield on August 10 at Wembley. To that end he fielded a different team in each half of a 2:1 win. Florian Wirtz, the £60m new boy from Leverkusen featured in neither. He is still working his way up to Anfield fitness standards and was not deemed ready.
One of the men who may need to find a new attacking role to complement Wirtz is Dominik Szoboszlai. The Hungarian played the first half and helped set up the opening goal for Conor Bradley. The 22-year-old is competing with new signing Jeremie Frimpong for the rightback vacancy created by the departure of Trent Alexander-Arnold for Real Madrid.
Georgia goalkeeper Giorgi Mamardashvili made his debut after arriving from Valencia while the wholesale second-half changes included Frimpong and Milos Kerkez taking over the fullback roles.
Darwin Nunez and Cody Gakpo emulated Jota’s ‘shark celebration’ in front of the Liverpool fans in scoring their second and third goals. Liam Lindsay pulled one back for Preston inbetween but the scoreline was irrelevant. This match was all about “a lad from Portugal, better than Figo don’t you know, his name is Diogo!”
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