Diogo José Teixeira da Silva (born 4 December 1996), known as Diogo Jota is a Portuguese forward, formerly of Wolves, just signed for Liverpool, and is a Portuguese international.
But who is Diogo Jota? Born in Porto, he started his professional career with Paços de Ferreira, joining their youth side in 2013, before being promoted to the first team for the 2014-15 season.
Jota made his first senior appearance for the side in October 2014, starting in a 4-0 win over Atletico S.C in the Taça de Portugal (the Portuguese FA Cup). His first Primeira Liga appearance followed in February of 2015 as a substitute in a 2-2 draw.
The first goals for the forward came a few months later for Paços when he scored a brace in a 3-2 win, becoming the youngest player to score for the team in their top flight history.
Diogo Jota soon signed a new five year deal with the club, which tied him there until 2020, but less than a year later he was off. Atletico Madrid came calling, and the lure of the Spanish capital was in his sights. On 14 March 2016, he signed a five year deal with Atletico, effective 1 July. However, he was never to make an appearance in the red and white stripes soon returning to his own country with a year long loan deal to FC Porto being agreed in August 2016.
Diego Jota got his first goals for FC Porto scoring a first half hat-trick in a 4-0 win over C.D Nacional.
In July 2017, Jota was on the move again. Another year long loan deal, this time to Wolverhampton Wanderers in the English Championship, scoring his first goal for Wolves in August in a 3-2 away win over Hull City. It didn’t take long for Wolves to see his quality and look to make the loan deal permanent.
This happened in the January 2018 transfer window, with the loan continuing until the summer window, and the permanent deal starting in July, for a reported €14 million. Diogo scored a career best 17 goals this season, helping Wolves gain promotion to the English Premier League.
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Diogo went on to score numerous goals in Wolves next two campaigns, and helping them not only avoid relegation, but get into the Europa League. On 19 January 2019, Jota netted three times in the 4–3 home defeat of Leicester City, his second career hat-trick, becoming only the second Portuguese player in the Premier League to do such, after one Cristiano Ronaldo some 11 years previously.
In the final Europa League group game at home to Besiktas, he replaced team mate and countryman Ruben Neves as a 56th minute substitute, with the score level at 0-0. Jota scored his first goal of the match on 72 minutes before completing another hat-trick in an eventual 4-0 win over the Turkish side.
Jota did the same against RCD Espanyol in the same competition a year later.
Starting his Portugal international career at Under-19 level, in 2015, Jota was called up to the senior side for the first time in March 2019, before the UEFA Euro 2020 qualifying matches against Ukraine and Serbia. Still uncapped, he was part of the squad that won the 2019 Nations League finals on home soil, although he didn’t make an appearance.
Diogo Jota scored his first international goal just a couple weeks back, on the 5th September 2020 in a 4-1 win over Croatia in the UEFA Nations League.
On the 18th September, on the same day Liverpool announced their long awaited signing of Thiago Alcantara from Bayern Munich, it was also announced to much surprise amongst the media and the fans that we’d also moved for and secured the signing of Diogo Jota from Wolves. £45 million over the course of the deal, but only £4.1 million approximately up front, with our young defender Ki Jana Hoever going the other way in the deal for an initial fee of £9 million.
Thiago and Jota on the same day? Somebody buy Michael Edwards a large drink!
Simon Pearce
