Diogo Jota: His death brings the illusion machine football to stutter

A special scene usually remains in the memory of large players. Cristiano Ronaldo, wide -legged like a cowboy before the execution of a free kick. Zinédine Zidane with his retirees, the ball with his right foot, but playing with the left. Diego Maradona with the Rabona trick, in which he led the gunshot behind his main leg to hit a flank. Since then, there are millions of times to visit countless sports fields every weekend, from the district league A to the Bundesliga.

Such a scene, such a “signature move”, does not exist from Diogo Jota. Jota was a very good footballer, member of the master team of FC Liverpool and the Portuguese national team, but none of the big ones in his field. And yet his death touches people around the world. People who know his name but have no sharp picture of him in mind.

The fate of Diogo Jota, born on December 4, 1996 in Porto, died on July 3, 2025 on a motorway near Cernadilla, Spain, not only laid the football industry. When the accident message around the world went on Wednesday afternoon, this caused a shock to read in the social media channels that were flooded with red hearts and comments full of grief and bewilderness.

It is also difficult to bring together: a young man, 28 years old, stated in a thousand football battles, loses his life. That is the opposite of what the narrative of football promises: that heroes are born on the lawn, survival and invulnerable, all of earthly.

Football is to blame for this distorted image; He stages his protagonists in a often surreal way. How often did you see Cristiano Ronaldo in the nearby setting, with a naked upper body, send a thank you greeting to the sky? No player has nourished the picture of the eternally young footballer as the inviolable Ronaldo, 40 years old, most recently scorer against Germany in the Nations League.

And then someone like Diogo Jota is torn out of life. From now on. Created to death because of a burst car tire. Father of three children, freshly married, one of whom was said that he still had life ahead of him.

A story of fate that would have been shuddered without a football context. But football makes them more urgent and also draws them to a second level.

Diogo Jota’s accidental death lets the illusion machine stuttered, and this stuttering leads fans of this sport to a painful self -knowledge: that one was happy to be part of this illusion machine. Larger Than Life believed that you thought something that is listed by real people, but somehow supernatural. That you have been seduced by the superhero count of football, even though you think you are a critical head.

This weekend, Diogo Jotas will be thought of with silence at the European Championship of women in Switzerland and at the men’s club World Cup in the USA; Some teams may play with a funeral flor. From next week at the latest, however, the illusion machine will run again at full speed. Football will have forgotten Diogo Jota.

Players are put back into the picture like Greek gods in antiquity. It will feel good – for those who pose on the lawn down there. And especially for those who watch in the stands or on the television.