Both Kylian Mbappe and Ousmane Dembele honored Diogo Jota following their goals in Saturday’s (July 5) FIFA Club World Cup. However, they weren’t the only athletes who paid tribute to the Liverpool forward this past weekend.
The 28-year-old was tragically killed in a car crash in the early hours of Thursday (July 3), along with his brother, Andre Silva.
At the beginning of Liverpool’s preseason, the brothers were traveling across Spain to catch a ferry back to Merseyside when their car veered off the road due to a blown tire.
The majority of the Reds’ team traveled to Portugal for the funeral of Jota and Silva, who were buried on Saturday, July 5, in their hometown of Gondomar.
Following their deaths, tributes to the two have been pouring in from the football community and beyond. Mbappe and Dembele both paid tribute to the Liverpool forward with their most recent goal celebrations.
In reference to Jota’s shirt number, Mbappe made a 20 motion with his fingers and prayed as he celebrated his game-winning goal against Borussia Dortmund.
Dembele had previously recreated Jota’s well-known gamer goal celebration to honor his own effort against Bayern Munich.
However, one of Jota’s former teammates recreated the celebration in heartfelt scenes after scoring in Major League Soccer, so the Frenchmen weren’t the only players to do so in the US.
Early on Sunday morning (July 6), Real Salt Lake defeated them 3-2, with Diogo Goncalves on the scoresheet.
The 28-year-old played with Jota for Portugal’s Under-21 team during the 2018–19 season while on loan at Nottingham Forest. In their ten games together, the two contributed to four goals in 2017 and 2018.
After sprinting onto a through-ball and carrying it into the box, cutting inside onto his right foot, and curling into the top corner, Goncalves gave Salt Lake an impressive goal.
After reenacting Jota’s gamer celebration and pointing to the sky in remembrance of his former teammate, the tearful Portuguese ushered his teammates away.