PATRICIA DE MELO MOREIRA / AFP
Rute Cardoso (C), widow of Portuguese striker Diogo Jota, and Jota’s parents, Joaquim and Isabel Silva, by her side, paying homage to the Portuguese international.
Almost a year later, the parents of the brothers who died tragically in Zamora spoke out, and excerpts from the book “Diogo Jota – Nunca Mais é Longo Tempo”, which recalls the life of the Portuguese international, began to circulate.
Almost a year has passed since that of Diogo Jota and his brother, André Silva — a tragedy that took the only children of Joaquim and Isabel Silva in what is described by the couple as “the most horrible day” of their lives.
In the context of the launch of the book “Diogo Jota – Nunca Mais é Longo Tempo”, already announced by the FPF, the couple confessed to TV 7Dias that the pain of loss continues to be present every day.
“I didn’t go through. I will go through everything, until I die,” said the mother of the Liverpool and Penafiel players, who died on July 3, 2025, in a car accident in Zamora, Spain, where they were in a Lamborghini when it crashed and caught fire.
In the book, by José Manuel Delgado, it is mentioned, according to , that the mother of the two players went into denial when he learned of the accident, telling those around him that “the children were just injured” and waiting for medical attention. Also for Joaquim, the death of his two children was “the most horrible day” of his life.
After the tragedy, the family’s attention focused mainly on Dinis, Duarte and Mafalda, the three children that Diogo Jota had with Rute Cardoso, with whom he had been dating since high school.
“When I’m with them I try to talk about them. I’ll never stop talking about them and showing images. My André was Duarte’s godfather and I’ll always do that. I’ll remember them”, he assures the magazine.
The maternal grandfather, Alberto Teixeira, also spoke to the magazine of “deep sadness” and revealed that he maintains the ritual of going to the cemetery every day to visit his grandchildren’s graves.
Last month, José Manuel Delgado told what Rute told him about the life she led with Jota, citing a conversation that is in the book.
“I will quote Ruth [a viúva]in one of the conversations we had and which is in the book, in which she said: ‘We were a boring couple, basically, because we didn’t smoke, we didn’t drink, we didn’t drink coffee, we didn’t like going out at night.what we really liked was being at home, sometimes Diogo playing Playstation, because he had a tremendous passion for e-sports, watching movies, I don’t know, on television, on Netflix, having friends at home to play board games, that’s what gave us pleasure’”, said the author, quoted here by the magazine.
“It’s very curious”, he continued, “because Diogo had a group of friends since his school days at Gondomar, when he was eight years old, which he maintained until the end. They continued to meet each other in Gondomar, then when he played for Porto, then they went to Wolverhampton, Liverpool… here they met many times, therefore, Diogo had a very strong nucleus of old friendships and they shared a series of episodes for the book, in fact, and I asked the five of them to each told a different story spent with Diogo – this group from Gondomar was made up of six already including Diogo”.
The book dedicated to Diogo Jota is seen by the family as a source of pride.
“I feel very proud to see that my children were adored by everyone. In the midst of all this tragedy, I knew the children I had, but people never know it is to this point and seeing the repercussion that this has around the world is gratifying. It’s not enough, because I would prefer to have them here, but it is very gratifying”, said the mother of the two brothers.
