Diogo Jota made it the '90s again through science or magic

The maddest thing about Diogo Jota’s Liverpool career is that he was originally a second choice target after Timo Werner.

The side wasn’t exactly lacking for firepower on the pitch before he arrived, on paper. Mohamed Salah, Sadio Mané and Roberto Firmino were pretty obviously a brilliant front three able to complement each other perfectly, but the bench looked… thin. Fourth choice was effectively Divock Origi, who had some huge moments but didn’t have the quality to be relied upon if a first choice attacker was unavailable. FSG never like to spend big on substitutes, but depth was needed here.

The Reds thought they had found a solution in Werner. He’d been tearing up the Bundesliga specifically as a mobile attacker running into the half-spaces¹, which is exactly what Jürgen Klopp wants. He was putting the ball in the back of the net again and again, so we all just naturally assumed that would keep happening. Werner was the top priority and looked set to join Liverpool until a little thing called Covid happened, when the club suddenly didn’t have the cash on hand to meet RB Leipzig’s demands. Chelsea did have the money, so the player joined Stamford Bridge instead. Liverpool, meanwhile, looked down the list of candidates and went for Diogo Jota².

It was easy to imagine what he might look like within the profile of attackers Liverpool liked to sign: highly flexible, a hard worker, sprints in behind to attack the half-spaces and excellent link-up play. He had some of those qualities in abundance. But the core of his game was quite different. He wasn’t quite Salah, Mané or Firmino. More than anything else, he was Robbie Fowler.

Diogo Jota was not a brilliant dribbler. He was never an outstanding creative passer. He couldn’t pull out some brilliant skill from nowhere or score screamers from range. I sometimes felt it was a waste playing him out wide, because his skills were so specifically about one thing: getting into the box and sniffing out chances from close range. He scored “scruffy” goals from being in the right place at the time. He didn’t have the most obvious flashy skills but, like many great attackers before him, he just knew how to put the ball in the back of the net. Fox in the box.

In light of his tragic passing, Andy Robertson called him “the most British foreign player I’ve ever met”. José Mourinho claimed he was “not from this generation”. In both cases, they were talking about Diogo Jota as a human being, but I think it applies just as well to his playing style. Until some time in the early 2000s, football absolutely loved playing this type of poacher upfront. Think Filippo Inzaghi, Ruud van Nistelrooy or Gerd Müller. British football arguably prized that type of striker more than anyone else, with players like Gary Lineker, Andy Cole and Ian Rush. We really adore a ruthless poacher in this country.

If Diogo Jota had been born in the UK 25 years earlier, that’s almost certainly the type of player he would have become. He’d be playing in a 4-4-2 system, perhaps next to a bigger target man-style forward who could deliver knock-downs for him to score tap-ins for fun. But that didn’t happen. He was born in Portugal in 1996. Portuguese football, the stereotype goes, produces brilliant wingers and versatile attackers but cannot develop proper strikers. This was true for almost all of Diogo Jota’s life. He was born into a country whose national side was built around Luis Figo, then effectively replaced by Cristiano Ronaldo. Diogo Jota was obviously much closer to the latter than the former, but he still feels shaped by that Portuguese desire to have dribbly wingers who can play across the front line. When he left Portugal, it was to join Nuno Espirito Santo’s Wolves, so he effectively remained in a Portuguese footballing environment until signing for Liverpool.

By that point, the whole world had followed Portugal’s advice and thrown out proper strikers for flexible interchanging forwards. Liverpool led the way, with Klopp using Firmino to lead the line primarily for his pressing and link-up play. Diogo Jota played that sort of role in terms of minutes played, but it was different. He wouldn’t drop deep and link like Firmino. He didn’t move harmoniously with Salah and Mané. But it didn’t matter because he knew how to score a goal.

Maybe I’m selling him short here. The structure of the side didn’t really suffer when he played ahead of Firmino. Liverpool were still able to play their fluid football. Part of this is because he was certainly no slouch when it came to pressing. Liverpool also found ways to rely a little less on the number nine as a passing hub. But Diogo Jota always felt like an additive in the team, rather than someone who took something away. The types of goals he scored were of the sort that Salah, Mané and Firmino wouldn’t get. He was something different. An ace up the sleeve.

The needs of the team continued to evolve, especially when Klopp was replaced by Arne Slot. Darwin Núñez was the big loser here, as Slot wanted his attackers to do a little less and hold their position more. This, though, suited Diogo Jota absolutely perfectly. It’s a real shame his last professional season, like too many of his others, got so disrupted by injury. The structure of the side was really strong with Diogo Jota in dynamic pressing poacher mode upfront. I think this could’ve continued to evolve as an important feature of the side. Now we’ll never know.

In May of this year, Diogo Jota lifted the Premier League trophy. In June, he won the UEFA Nations League with his country. That same month, he married the woman he loved, and by July he was gone. If nothing else, I hope all of those things helped him feel happy and fulfilled in his final days on Earth. He meant something to people. He was different. He stood out in the world of modern football, and we are so much weaker for his loss.

Thank you, Diogo.

1. The space between the opposing full back and centre back, basically. It’s a big deal in modern German tactics that doesn’t have a natural comparison in English.

2. Yes, I know it’s pedantic, but “Jota” is not his last name, so it isn’t correct to simply call him that.