Portugal and Spain gamers noticed a interval of silence earlier than their Ladies’s European Championship opening recreation Thursday in reminiscence of Portugal and Liverpool ahead Diogo Jota.
Each units of gamers additionally wore black armbands for the match. Gamers and supporters stayed silent for round 20 seconds earlier than the followers began applauding.
Jota and his brother André Silva had been killed in a automobile crash shortly after midnight in northwestern Spain when the Lamborghini they had been travelling in veered off a highway and burst into flames, Spanish police mentioned earlier.
Their deaths prompted an outpouring of grief from followers, gamers and officers throughout each girls’s and males’s soccer.
“Initially, I want to take a couple of moments to pay our respect to Diogo and his brother. We’re pondering very a lot concerning the household,” Portugal coach Francisco Neto mentioned after Portugal’s 5-0 loss to world champions Spain.
“Diogo adopted our staff as a result of he cherished the nation. I’ve been assistant coach of under-19 in elite rounds when Diogo was U19 and we meet there. Since there, we maintain in touch, once we cross in camps, the lads’s and girls’s groups.
“After we speak, he all the time is aware of the outcomes, he follows the staff, some gamers. That is the tradition we’ve got in Portugal. Everybody likes the success of all of the groups. It is a tradition we’ve got in our federation. That is what we’re as a rustic.
“In the present day is a very unhappy day as a result of two lives have been misplaced so younger and this isn’t a great day. In fact if we’ve got the likelihood to vary the whole lot, we’d change in a heartbeat.”
Portugal’s gamers remained on the pitch after the ultimate whistle, posing in entrance of their followers with an enormous black banner in reminiscence of Jota.
Some Portugal followers displayed banners in tribute to Jota earlier than the sport. “Thanks for the whole lot,” was written on one. “Relaxation in peace,” mentioned one other.
“In the present day, for them,” Portugal ahead Francisca (Kika) Nazareth had mentioned on Instagram some hours earlier than the match.
“One among our personal,” teammate and fellow ahead Jéssica Silva wrote, “Diogo wasn’t only a star. He was one of many good ones, the loyal ones, the attentive ones, the easy-going ones … a kind of who do not want noise to make their mark.
“Thanks, Diogo. Thanks, André. Soccer has develop into poorer … and so have we. You’ll by no means be forgotten.”
Talking to reporters on the way in which in to the stadium, the president of the Portuguese parliament Jose Aguiar Branco mentioned the nation would honour the pair for his or her contribution to the game.
“Tomorrow within the Meeting of the Republic, we are going to vote on the movement of condolence that I’ll current with a view to honour the reminiscence of those two younger folks and likewise the legacy that they depart to nationwide sport,” he mentioned.
Info from ESPN’s Sam Marsden, The Related Press and Reuters was used on this report.