Portugal will walk into Thursday night’s World Cup match against Croatia in Toronto carrying the memory of Diogo Jota, exactly one year after his death in a car accident in Spain. The game is for a place in the last 16, but for Ruben Neves and the rest of the Portugal camp, the date has made it something heavier than a routine knockout tie.
Neves said he still talks to Jota, and that he keeps the conversations going through archived WhatsApp messages. He is wearing Jota’s number 21 shirt at the World Cup, a detail that makes the absence easier to see than to explain. “I still talk to him,” Neves said. “We have a WhatsApp group with Rute and Diogo, and it’s still there, and we continue to talk there.” He added: “Whenever something special happens, I have the conversations archived on my WhatsApp so I can continue to send him messages.”
The anniversary lands with painful precision. Jota died 11 days after marrying Rute Cardoso, and Andre Silva was also killed in the accident on 3 July 2025. Jota was 28. He had been on his way back to Liverpool for pre-season when the Lamborghini left the road after a tyre blowout while overtaking another vehicle. He was making the journey to England by car and ferry because doctors had advised him against flying after minor surgery.
That is why Portugal’s preparations in Toronto feel so emotionally charged. Roberto Martinez named Jota as an honorary plus-one player in May and said: “Diogo is our sun and our light.” That sentiment has only grown sharper as the team heads into a World Cup match on the first anniversary of his death, with the players trying to compete while carrying a loss that has not had time to fade.
Jota’s place in Portugal’s story was built over years, from Gondomar to Pacos de Ferreira, then to Porto, Wolves and Liverpool. He scored 14 times in 49 appearances for Portugal and had celebrated the Premier League title two months before he died. A month before his death, after Portugal beat Spain to win the Nations League in Stuttgart, he wrote: “With you by our side, everything is possible. Thank you, Portugal!”
Portugal now have to turn that memory into something the team can carry without being slowed by it. They will play Croatia in Toronto for a place in the last 16, and the unanswered part is not whether Jota will be remembered, but how a squad still grieving him turns that remembrance into energy when the match begins.
