‘Humble but ambitious’ Diogo Jota ready to prove his doubters wrong again

Few saw this coming, until recently. Having decided to shelve their long-term interest in £45million Timo Werner - as close to a sure thing as there was out there on the back of a 34-goal season – in a post-pandemic world, Liverpool have spent nearly as much on another forward, Diogo Jota. Nine months younger, the former Wolves forward has the advantage of Premier League experience, but his arrival at Anfield is not quite the galáctico signing that fans love to fill transfer gossip columns.

Some will think it is about keeping the peace, with Jota not immediately threatening the break-up of the Sadio Mané-Mohamed Salah-Roberto Firmino holy trinity as insistently as Werner would have been presumed to do. That, however, is to misunderstand the psyche of a player long feted for the elite but who has had to dig in and work hard to finally arrive here.

The 23-year-old wouldn’t have it any other way. Even growing up in Porto, with Portuguese football hardly known for its physical power, Jota was “always the smallest player on the pitch, especially between the ages of 10 and 14,” he remembers - but rarely daunted, and started racking up a series of landmarks before finishing his teens. He was 18 when he scored his first goal for Paços de Ferreira, a club in the north-eastern outskirts of Porto, becoming their youngest-ever top-flight goalscorer in May 2015.

Just over a year later, in summer 2016, Paços sold Jota to Atlético Madrid in a transfer that the president of their commercial board Rui Seabra at the time called “historic”. It allowed the club to do some upgrade work on their modest Mata Real stadium and invest in their academy that Jota himself had graduated from. Atlético had come to visit in February when Paços were hosting one of their biggest games of the season against Benfica, to have another look at him at close quarters and establish a personal relationship. Jota scored an outstanding goal, curled in from range, and any doubts the Spanish club might have had dissolved on the spot.

Months later and Jota was back in his home city, loaned to Porto after taking part in pre-season with Diego Simeone’s recently defeated Champions League finalists. He again quickly carved a personal niche in history, scoring a hat-trick at Nacional on his full debut in October 2016.

He was one of only five Porto players to have scored a first-half hat-trick at the time, and club legends Deco, Jardel and Rabah Madjer – whose goal against Bayern Munich in the 1987 European Cup final win is one of the most iconic in Portuguese football history – were three of the other four.

The teenage Jota cut the figure of a young man in a rush, and he was blunt when explaining why his initial stop in Madrid had been a brief one. “I didn’t want to be always sat in the stand,” he said after leaving the pitch with the match ball at Choupana that night. He had learned plenty from his weeks at Atlético, later remarking that the intensity of the pre-season training affected by Simeone and his trusted fitness guru Oscar ‘Profe’ Ortega had left some players throwing up on the sidelines. The style of football, Jota hinted, wasn’t quite his cup of tea, but he respected the experience.

He had already learned by then that his singular drive need not stop him from taking on board other points of view. His finishing power was always in him. Jota had played for Gondomar, just outside central Porto, before joining the Paços academy and had been a central midfielder. When he joined up with Paços, the decision was quickly made to turn him into a forward. His academy coach Vasco Seabra told Mais Futebol in 2016 that Jota was “reluctant” to be pushed further forward. “He thought he would be further away from the action.” He nevertheless followed orders and it clicked. “He trains like he plays,” said Seabra. “He’s humble, but very, very ambitious.”

That was the impression taken away by Nuno, who gave him the call for that dazzling Porto debut on the island of Madeira. The coach was appointed Wolves head coach nine days after Porto – after a frustrating, trophyless season – terminated his deal in summer 2017, and he managed to get a deal to sign Jota completed weeks later. The loan worked so well that the transfer was made permanent for €14m in the following January. Maybe Atlético, having blown a lot of cash on forward players in recent years with decidedly mixed results, wonder what might have been.

Not just media and fans but friends and acquaintances questioned if Jota knew what he was doing when he swapped Spain for the English second tier, and that desire to prove the doubters wrong has never truly left him. He may need it again at Liverpool. What he has stacked in his favour, as he did at Porto and Wolves, is a coach who has a plan for him.

Jota feels like a much better fit for Jürgen Klopp and his team than the talented Ismaila Sarr, for example, as a wide forward rather than an out-and-out winger. His first goal for Portugal’s senior team, against Croatia in the Nations League a fortnight ago, showed just how direct he is and how he thrives in exalted company. Klopp, who praised his new man as part of “this unbelievable Portuguese generation” has not picked him for his talent alone.

The coach has said that Jota will be given time to settle in, and that he will not be rushed. Nevertheless, early fireworks are in no way out of the question.