By Tyrone Francis, sports producer in Gondomar<\/b><\/p>\n
A steady flow of hundreds, possibly a thousand, people queued patiently in over 30-degree heat to pay their respects at the Capela da Ressurreicao.<\/p>\n
The small, unassuming white building, symbolic of this close-knit community, saw famous figures and members of the public alike say a final goodbye to Diogo Jota and his younger brother, Andre Silva.<\/p>\n
Their wooden coffins were positioned a metre apart, side-by-side in the centre of a dimly-lit square room. <\/p>\n
The hall had three walls lined with pews, full with people, reflecting on the lives of the two footballers, aged just 28 and 25. <\/p>\n
Quiet sobs and the movement of single sheets of paper being used as fans to keep cool were the only noises audible in the room.<\/p>\n
Emotions were sombre and visitors wiped the tears that trickled down their cheeks.<\/p>\n
But the main emotion was one of disbelief that two skilful footballers – with their whole careers ahead of them \u2013 are gone way too early.<\/p>\n
The caskets, surrounded by wreaths and draped in white roses, were the central focus of everyone’s attention.<\/p>\n
No one cared who else was in the room, people cried, people reflected and people prayed with their heads bowed down.<\/p>\n
Footballers Bernardo Silva, Fabinho and Thiago Alc\u00e2ntara were in the room at the time.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But the most poignant image will be that of Diogo Jota’s wife, who sat on the floor in between the two coffins, a place she had been since arriving in the early hours of the morning.<\/p>\n
The queues continued outside where two books of condolence had been set up for mourners to pen their tributes.<\/p>\n
As bells at the neighbouring church, where tomorrow’s funeral service will be held, ring on the hour, every hour, this community remembers two talents, the humble guys who represented them on the grass pitch of the world’s biggest stage.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Tyrone Francis, sports producer in Gondomar A steady flow of hundreds, possibly a thousand, people queued patiently…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":239710,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5312],"tags":[2000,299,104],"class_list":{"0":"post-239709","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-spain","8":"tag-eu","9":"tag-europe","10":"tag-spain"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114799844086644711","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239709","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=239709"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239709\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/239710"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=239709"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=239709"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=239709"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}