Heartbreaking Rúben Neves: “I still talk to Diogo Jota and few people know that”
Just a year ago the world of football dressed in mourning. Diogo Jota, Liverpool player at that time, He lost his life at the age of 28 in a traffic accident.. A news that shook the entire planet and, above all, Ruben Neveswith whom he had met at Porto and Wolves and who had become his best friend.
Now, the Al-Hilal midfielder wanted to give an interview to talk about this topic for the first time. A heartbreaking talk in which he told how he received the terrible news and said that he is still sending messages to Diogo.
“It was very difficult. The day after the news was the most difficult day of my life. I wanted to play for Diogo, first and then I knew he was there. The next game I played with Diogo’s strength perhaps. I realized I could make it to the funeral. In other words, by playing, he arrived in Portugal on time, because otherwise he might not have played. I had a lot of people telling me not to play and to come back right away, but I stuck to what I thought was right. The club helped me a lot in that aspect. I asked him to book the trip for me and he took care of everything. “My thought was to do what Diogo liked to do, which was play football.”he started counting totally excited.
And he went on to relate: “I was in the United States, at the Club World Cup and Rute (Diogo’s wife) called me. Around one in the morning I received a call from Rute and it was not normal, because when I was talking to them it was Diogo who called me and gave me the news. I can’t explain what I felt at that moment. God wanted my wife to be in the same hotel as me because I had a holiday booked with the children after the game against Manchester City. “If I lost that game I would go with them too and he decided to cancel the holiday because we beat City and he said ‘now that we’re here, we’ll stay until the final’.”
“I still talk to him and few people know that. We have a group on WhatsApp with Rute and Diogo, it is still there and we continue talking there. And whenever something special happens, I I still have my WhatsApp conversation with him and I still send him messages“added Neves.
“I live the emptiness by bringing back all the memories I have with him whenever I can. That is my way of living the loss of Diogo and I feel super comforted by that. It will never stop being painful, but we are going to learn to live with that pain. I still talk to Rute. Last week we made a video call to talk to Dinis (one of Diogo’s sons), because he also plays soccer and I asked him to call me. It’s the relationship I want to have with them. The first time I saw them after everything that happened was very difficult. But they know that whenever Débora (his wife) and I need it, we will be here,” said the midfielder.
“The last conversation we had was chen the League of Nations ended and it was about cars, because I was going to rent a car to come from England to Portugal after the wedding. “I couldn’t travel by plane because of the lung problem and our last talk was about the Ferrari I was going to rent,” he recalled.
And, finally, he opened up about the big thorn in his side: “I didn’t go to their wedding and that is one of the things I regret most. But it was impossible. Those are the things we footballers talk about, that sometimes you can’t be involved in important things. This was one of the things that cost me the most, but was in competition in the United States. “I couldn’t be present,” he lamented.
