Diogo Jota’s Song Will Live On As A Memorial

Photo by Andrew Powell/Liverpool FC via Getty Images

As Liverpool head coach Arne Slot said, when the time is right, we will sing his song. And with it we will remember.

Liverpool fans are sometimes credited with teaching the sport how to sing, and creating memorable songs and chants are a huge part of the club’s supporter culture.

From singing The Beatles on the old Kop, adopting You’ll Never Walk Alone from a lesser known Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, to unique songs for players that went on to play less than twenty times in Reds, the music and sounds of Anfield have become a way to immortalize players, managers, and moments in the Liverpool pantheon forever.

Which brings us back to the loss of Diogo Jota. The Portuguese striker arrived on Merseyside in the midst of Covid and made an instant impact in front of empty stands in empty stadiums. For his efforts, when supporters returned he was gifted with one of the most memorable Liverpool chants of the past fifteen years to the melody of “Bad Moon Rising” by Creedence Clearwater Revival.

Liverpool aren’t the first to use the tune, as Argentine side River Plate have used it for themselves, but it’s notable that it has been brought all the way to Merseyside. A lot of Broadway standards have been used throughout the top flight, but the American Southern rock legends are maybe the last band that one would expect to be used for an iconic song amongst English football stands.

Even the song itself is more about the changing times ahead, released in 1969 and inspired by the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr and John F. Kennedy, than overcoming those obstacles. The parallels between Creedence and Diogo Jota, then, are for what it’s worth more about their hard, working class backgrounds.

Jota was recognized throughout his career as someone who grafted his to the top level. He said himself he was still paying to play at the age of 16, when other stars had been scooped up by academies and given their training. An attitude, passion, and assertion to get it done, however he could, was palpable from the pitch through the screens of everyone watching. The same type of hard working, get back up persona that lives in Liverpool itself.

That graft and his personality perhaps helped the song to catch fire around Anfield during the 2021-22 season, barely a year after fans returned to the stands and had been limited to watching our Portuguese poacher work his magic from home.

For Liverpool, Jota was always the definition of graft and being in the right place at the right time, and though injuries at times got in the way, he was always a reliable goal scorer, the club’s best finisher. It always felt as though you could expect some kind of magic when he came onto the pitch.

The joy of the song will now come with a bittersweet edge, but it will continue to be sung throughout stadiums whenever Liverpool play—and even, perhaps, when they don’t. There are already efforts to organize fans singing the song at the 20th minute of matches, started on Friday at the UEFA Women’s Euros as Portugal played Spain.

In the days since his tragic passing, it has also regularly echoed outside of Anfield as fans, former teammates, and opposing teammates alike have laid memorials and paid tribute to Jota.

It’s now the best way, perhaps one of the only real ways, the fans can immortalize our lad from Portugal.

He’s better than Figo, don’t you know?

His name is Diogo.