Diogo Jota bestowed the gift of a father watching his son fall astonishingly in love with Liverpool Football Club when he scored against Tottenham. This is Matt Dony’s story.
I have good friends. My son, K, has good friends, too. But it’s different. When you’re 13, having good friends means spending as much time with them as possible.
A whole day in school, then hang out after school, then part ways and text message, WhatsApp and Snap all evening from dimly lit bedrooms, before repeating the next day.
Being several demographics older than 13, my relationship with my friends has changed. I might go a period of time without talking to them. I might go a period of time without messaging them. But when we do get in touch, there’s a reason. It has meaning.
Simon is a good friend I don’t talk to or message often. One of those periods of radio silence was broken when he sent me a message in April 2023.
He had secured three tickets to watch a Liverpool game from the Kop: ‘one for him, one for his son, and did I want the other one?’ Yes. Yes, I did. Of course I did. With every ounce of my being, I wanted to go.
The pesky big picture got in the way. I was going through a divorce, and was sharing custody of my then 11-year-old son.
I have had easier periods in my life. There was quite enough upheaval already, so despite the (thankfully) amicable nature of the divorce and subsequent parenting arrangements, I was making a concerted effort to be available when he expected and not chop and change days. And I was due to have him on this particular Sunday.
With a sigh, I messaged Simon back and said I wouldn’t be able to go. C’est la vie. There would be other opportunities, I lied to myself.
Half an hour later, my phone buzzed again: “I’ve been thinking, why doesn’t K have my ticket? I can drive us up to Liverpool and watch the game in a pub nearby while the three of you go to the stadium. I’ve seen hundreds of games there. It’s amazing taking your son to his first game.”
I read it again. Blinked. Wiped away a little tear (spoiler alert: this won’t be the final time I cry), and replied: “If you’re absolutely sure, that would be amazing.”
I didn’t know what else to say.
“That’s settled, then. He can come with us. We’ll have an amazing time.”
Like I said: good friends.
To the match we go
I grew up in Pembrokeshire. I can’t remember exactly what it was that pushed me towards Liverpool. I knew people who supported them. It sounded like a good name; they seemed good. That was enough.
I was now a Liverpool fan. Some of my friends were Manchester United fans! Boo! They were rubbish!
There’s a photo of me around this age in front of my parents’ front door, in a Crown Paints kit, holding a black and white football, with a big smile on my face. Few people are happier than an eight-year-old football fan in full kit.
A resolute love of Liverpool and football (in that order) lasted for a few years, right up until I discovered music.
My dad had been a goalkeeper and a guitarist in his youth and young adulthood, and a guitarist who missed playing in goal in his later adulthood. He played the local pub circuit with his band, and the one thing that made me (nearly) as happy as a Crown Paints kit was seeing him on stage.
I always liked music – but around my early teens, I fell for music. I fell hard. The Smashing Pumpkins changed my life. And football suffered. Suddenly, I was a sullen teenager perfecting the lost art of taking myself too seriously.
The week after those messages, four of us piled into Simon’s car and he drove us all the way from South West Wales to Liverpool. We sang songs. We argued with Tesco staff in Newtown about meal deals. We laughed, we talked about past matches.
It’s a long drive, but it didn’t feel long. It never does when you’re with good friends.
There’s an aura around Anfield on match day. An aura that extends surprisingly far out. Any stadium, really, but especially Anfield.
When we parked and started walking, there was no one else around. Every few hundred yards, it felt like another wave of people had joined us, a community congregating in real time.
By the time we got to the stadium, I could sense K’s awe. Tens of thousands of people milling around, smiling, talking, drinking, singing. A togetherness and commonality threaded through the crowd.
The immensity of that famous, massive stand struck me. The congregation, 12,000-strong, could have been overwhelming for K. He seemed so small, so very young. But he was simply too ecstatic to countenance any negativity. I was suddenly very aware of his size. He was not.
In an attempt to manage expectations I explained that, while the experience of being here is amazing, not every game is a classic. You don’t know what will happen. Liverpool could lose. It could be an awful spectacle.
I needn’t have worried. This was a league visit from Tottenham.
Drama at Anfield
By my late teens, I had failed to become a rock star. This was a disappointment, if not entirely unexpected.
The band split up and football found me again, in the form of a weekly game: not competitive, not serious, just a long-standing five-a-side lark on a Friday evening.
I loved it. And I remembered how much I loved football. I felt embarrassingly stupid for having ignored it for so long.
On the Kop, we cheered as the referee blew the first whistle. Naturally, Liverpool were playing away from us for the first half, so they could attack the Kop in the second.
For the first 20 minutes, Spurs played like the physical embodiment of ‘Lads, it’s Tottenham‘.
Curtis Jones scored after three minutes, which seemed to take the whole stadium by surprise. K’s favourite player, Luis Diaz, added a second two minutes later with a fantastic finish.
We had to wait a whole 10 minutes for the next goal, a typically cool penalty from Mohamed Salah following a typically uncool lunge from Cristian Romero.
This was comedically entertaining. Spectacularly pleasing football. For us, anyway. Some of the Spurs fans left inside the first quarter of the match.
After half an hour, Spurs started to look like they knew what they were doing, and in the 40th minute Harry Kane scored. No need to panic; 3-1 is still a comfortable scoreline. In theory, anyway.
In practicality, Liverpool looked spooked and for the final five minutes of the half Spurs flooded forward in a manner that would have seemed laughable a quarter of an hour earlier. In truth, half-time spared Liverpool.
The second half didn’t quite pick up where the first half finished. It was flatter. Spurs’ manic assault at the end of the first 45 was in the past. But Liverpool were still soporific.
K learned some new words from the fans around us, a couple of which also began with ‘f’. There was some tension in the air, but not too much. Until the 77th minute, that is, and Son Heung-min’s expertly taken goal. 3-2.
For the first time, K looked worried. Still having the time of his life, but the game had changed.
Jota does what he did best
Richarlison, whose introduction in the 84th minute was greeted by some entertaining booing, equalised in the 93rd minute. It was his first Premier League goal for Spurs – on the last day of April.
I looked at K. He looked crestfallen. I knew we’d have beautiful memories, and we already had most of a wonderful story. I just didn’t want it to end like this.
Liverpool kicked off again. A few niggly fouls and the riotous Richarlison celebrations meant there were still a few minutes to play. A few vital, precious minutes.
Everything seemed significant. Every movement a player made, every pass, every touch. Spurs had the ball, then they didn’t.
Alisson went long with what looked like a poor pass. Lucas Moura calmly cushioned the ball back to Romero. Too calmly, too cushioned. Diogo Jota was on it and burned a laser-guided path towards the Tottenham goal.
Right in front of the Kop, right in front of us, in the 95th minute, Jota won the game. I screamed. K screamed. Simon’s son screamed. The fans around us stopped shouting industrial language long enough to scream.
I looked at K. Unalloyed, unbridled, untainted, unfathomable joy. I welled up, overwhelmed by his reaction, my own feelings, the jubilation of the crowd, the heartiest rendition of You’ll Never Walk Alone. We hugged. We cheered. We sang ‘His name is Diogo’.
We are all made by our past, our experiences. Often, sadly, we forget more than we remember. In that moment I knew, with full certainty, that I would always remember this feeling. Few people are happier than an 11-year-old who has just seen his team score an injury-time winner.
Jota bestowed the perfect gift
In the early 2000s, I grew up in ways that I perhaps should have done previously. I started to think about the world more, and my place in it. I questioned myself more, tried to work out who I was, who I aspired to be. What my values were.
I thought about Liverpool a lot. How strange it seemed to feel such a strong connection to a team from a city to which I have no real connection. During this period, I visited Anfield for the first time.
I knew I was a Liverpool fan but I didn’t realise the extent, the depth of feeling I had. Being on the Main Stand with You’ll Never Walk Alone swirling around, I began to cry. There’s an alchemic, mystical power generated by a stadium full of people singing together.
The game was a drab draw. I didn’t care. I left Anfield a different person; my fanhood amplified, painted across me in neon colours.
Where I enjoyed the 2001 UEFA Cup victory, I lived the 2005 Champions League final; the utter madness of the game twisting me up and consuming me, before delivering a level of relief and awe and elation that I can’t fully comprehend 20 years later.
My devotion endured through the ensuing years, during which there were highs and lows. And I was there for both. The agony and the xG-stasy. Because it mattered. I couldn’t adequately explain exactly why it mattered. But I knew that it did.
July 2025, a Thursday morning. Two years after that visit to Anfield. Simon texted me again. A link to a news article; ‘Liverpool football star Diogo Jota, 28, killed in car crash – report.’
I was at work and I stared at my phone. I read it, then read it again. It couldn’t be right, but it was still there. There were still words on my screen. And then I felt sick.
Footballers aren’t supposed to just die. No one is supposed to just die, but footballers become a part of our lives.
Diogo Jota’s name is a part of the wallpaper of my weekends. It’s always there – in live matches, or highlight packages, or match reports. The thought of his name disappearing from that routine was grotesque.
I messaged back and forth with K. He was devastated, shocked. He’s 13 now, and he gets it.
I never met Diogo Jota, and he would have had no clue that I existed, or that he was responsible for one of the most significant memories of my life. I say that with unqualified sincerity.
The architect of that glorious moment, the spark that lit the joy on K’s face, was gone. As a father and a football fan, that gift was perfect.
It was almost jarring to realise someone I’d never met was stitched so tightly into my life. I sat at my desk and wiped a tear from my eye.
I wasn’t alone. Around the world fans were feeling the same way, having the same conversations.
Football belongs to everyone: players belong to teams, and teams belong to fans. We claim these players as our own.
We care about them; we jump to their defence in arguments with fans of other teams. We’re affronted when match reports criticise them. We read their biographies to better understand them. We feel a kinship with them. Of course that kinship can be broken, but not like this.
We are all made by our past, our memories. And we all live in each other’s memories.
Jota had gone. But he wasn’t gone. His name was sung throughout the first home game of the season against Bournemouth. ‘His name is Diogo’. Defiantly is. Defiantly present tense. Defiantly within our collective memories.
We all carry memories of those we’ve lost. People who were close to us, and people who were important to us.
I will carry the memory of Diogo Jota scoring the fourth goal against Spurs. And so will K. It was a moment that cemented his relationship with Liverpool and football, in that order.
Few people are happier than a father watching his son fall absolutely, astoundingly, astonishingly in love with something. I was given that gift. And I know exactly who bestowed it.
His name is Diogo.
* This is a guest article for This Is Anfield by Matt Dony.