Grief, Disbelief, Despair At Loss of Saint Diogo, and Where Do Liverpool Go From Here?

Making decisions amid the fog of pain and grief

The most important thing is taken care of, in terms of what happens next, in Liverpool paying the remaining two years of Diogo Jota’s contract to his family and setting up trust funds for his children.

But after the shock of his death on Thursday, the wake on Friday and burial on Saturday, everyone will have to return to the ‘normal’ duties of football tomorrow and on Tuesday, even if no one’s heart will quite be in it for a while.

Pretty soon, football decisions need to be made.

I’ve spent days grieving, mourning, disbelieving, denying. Even now, I read the news reports and think it can’t be true, when on every other level I know that it is. The images for the funeral confirm it, yet it still seems unreal.

I’ve faced the horrors of what happened, and both felt and expressed my pain, and how a similar family tragedy inadvertently shaped my own life. Others have shared their own stories of loss (as well as their love for Diogo) under the article linked below.

Making Sense of the Surreal and Cruel Death of Diogo Jota

But that was a few days ago.

I need something to occupy my mind, as the alternative is to stop and listen to it; and believe me, it’s not a mind that always has the best things to think, nor the best random thoughts to conjure (in the way no one can control what their mind suggests), only try to follow its path if it’s of interest or use, or if not, think hard about something else.

Often these unprovoked thoughts are aimed at myself, and all the things I’ve messed up my life, or could have done better, or where I suffered pain and rejection and loss and regret, or see myself as just not good enough; and to silence them I think of ways I can do better, try harder, when in reality, I’m not the person my mind tries to tell me I am.

To shut the noise up, I write about football. To tune out issues in my own life, I write about football. I look to the future, through writing about football. Football is both my medicine and my poison, driving me insane, and keeping me insane.

And football writing is not a process where mostly I sit and my desk at type, which I might do for a couple of hours a day (or more if it’s a mega-piece and I’m able).

It’s written in my head from dawn ’til dusk, sometimes impossible to shut down and driving me to distraction; other times it is the distraction itself, used to stop me facing pain, heartache, depression, self-loathing, uncertainty, regrets, or so as to not focus on physical pain, and frustrations with my health.

Get and write something about Liverpool, focus on work, when work is also a passion, a hobby and a tormentor. It’s unhealthy to throw yourself too much into work at times of shock and grief, but it has its uses.

To just sit with our painful thoughts, it seems, is like sitting in a bath of itching powder.

Most of the time, the worst doesn’t happen. Sadly, sometimes it does.

Incredibly, it’s 1964 since an active player at this level of English football died in such a swift and shocking way.

My thoughts have been turning to how a club deals with this, in all the different ways. Spurs would not help out John White’s widow in an age where players were paid pittance, but Liverpool haven’t made that gross mistake.

Obviously the club will be classy, and the fans sublime (with none of the anger and rejection experienced with the ‘loss’ of a hitherto cherished star this summer, which showed how complicated our emotions can be).

The no.20 will be retired, banners will be designed, mosaics laid out all around Anfield, and the song will be sung more than ever. A statue, a plaque, a gate, a memorial garden, a stand – something built or named in his honour, too.

The players will either find it hard to get going this season (and understandably so), or they’ll be filled with a resolve to do it for Diogo, in the way everyone wanted to do it for Jürgen when he was leaving, and immediately found energy, before slumping late-season.

Maybe a bit of both, though, with a mixture of guilt at still getting to do the thing they love, but as Diogo himself said, when you’re playing, you can forget everything else (and this is why playing football was my own escape in my younger years).

On a practical level, it’s just so weird, though.

It will always be too soon to discuss this, and yet this week sees the start of preseason.

So what do Liverpool do? How will the players cope? How does it change the transfer plans? Is Jota, the player (the person is irreplaceable), replaced by someone new, or does someone set to leave now stay? Do others set to leave – those close to Diogo – now feel a stronger sense of belonging, of remaining?

**The majority of this article is for paying TTT Main Hub subscribers only.**