Diogo Jota and his brother Andre Silva died in a car accident in Spain on July 3, and Liverpool’s season never recovered from the shock. Jota was 28. He had married his childhood sweetheart, Rute Cardoso, in Porto less than a fortnight earlier, and the couple had three young children.
The forward and his brother were travelling to Santander to catch a ferry to England for the start of pre-season training when the Lamborghini they were in careered off the road. Liverpool cancelled the first wave of pre-season testing after his death and chartered a flight the next day for players and staff to attend the joint funeral. For Rute Cardoso, the loss came at the centre of family life; for Liverpool, it became the first wound in a campaign that was supposed to begin as champions.
The club had gone into the summer after winning the Premier League title under Arne Slot, but it finished fifth with 60 points, its lowest tally for a decade and 24 fewer than the year before. Liverpool scored 63 league goals, 23 fewer than last season, and conceded 53, the most it has ever shipped in a 38-game Premier League campaign. Across all competitions, the team lost 19 times, or 20 if the Community Shield is included, and the only season since the club returned to the top flight in 1962 with more defeats was 1992-93.
The numbers explain why the grief around Jota never sat apart from the football. Liverpool confirmed Champions League qualification on the final day, but by then the mood had turned. Slot did not join the players for the traditional lap of appreciation after the 1-1 draw with Brentford, and he was booed and jeered at the penultimate home game against Chelsea. Senior club officials have admitted the scale of the challenge, saying Liverpool were dealt a difficult hand but should have played it better, while adding that there are mitigating factors and it still was not good enough.
Jota’s death remains the moment that defined Liverpool’s year, but the harder question is what the club does with the aftermath now that the season is over. The football can be measured in points, goals and defeats; the loss cannot. Liverpool enters the next chapter still carrying both.
