He has endured a long four-month trial without being able to compete due to a serious calf injury, but the last few days have been one of great happiness for Diogo Jota. The day before yesterday, he popped off the bench at 63″ in time to “offer” Liverpool’s 4-3 win against Tottenham with a goal at 90″+4, freeing his team from the embarrassment of signing in a match he would win 3–0. And he has scored five goals in the last four games, scoring twice with Leeds United and Notthingam Forest, missing out only West Ham.
The 26-year-old Portugal international returned to the league against Everton on February 13, but went 11 challenges without scoring, adding to the eight at the start of this season and 13 in the previous season. That is, an impressive fast of 32 challenges, which lasted… a year and 7 days! Everything changed with the double in victory against Leeds United on April 17 this year and since then Liverpool’s results have improved significantly, with the team moving up the Premier League to fifth place after winning their last four meetings .
Scott Minto, a former Benfica player in 1997/98 and 1998/99, is a television commentator for English Premier League matches and admits he fell in love with the Liverpool striker. “He’s the type of player any manager would want at his side. It was a surprise that Liverpool signed him from Wolves. [em setembro de 2020, por 45 milhões de euros], but the truth is that it was immediately successful. Jürgen Klopp already knew what a great player he was and how important he could be.”
The former winger emphasizes that “the season has been very difficult for him, due to injuries and the long streak without goals, but Jota has already shown that he is among the top players in the Premier League”. For the former footballer, the Portuguese is “very intelligent, technically excellent and because he’s not one of the tallest players, he’s very good in the air,” he says, admitting that he enjoys being on the Instagram of the striker can be seen publications in which he appears to be working even during the pre-season”. In addition, he adds, “he is very versatile, he can set himself up in different attacking positions”.
Despite the very slow pace he has been going through, Diogo Jota has scored 39 goals in 108 appearances for Liverpool, quite reasonable figures which take on even more impact when it is verified that he was not in the starting line-up in 37 of those matches. Scott Minto has no doubt that the striker was sorely missed by the Reds during the four months he was out. “I can’t say that with him on the field things would have been different for his team. But without a doubt, with him and Luis Díaz, who was also absent for a long time, the team would have more opportunities to improve his team.” performance.”
For the Portuguese national team, Jota scored ten goals in 30 international appearances. Could it be that, with Cristiano Ronaldo at the end of his career, the Liverpool striker can consider himself the great reference in the Portuguese attack? “It will be very difficult that one day he can compare himself to Cristiano, one of the best in the history of the game and I think it would be best for him not to try to take his space,” underlined Minto, but adds that “no doubt he can be a great goalscorer and help to forget about that great reference”.
Moreover, according to Scott Minto, Diogo Jota is already knocking at the door of the limited batch of the best strikers in the world. “If we picked the 11 best strikers, he might not be on the list, but I think he would be on the bench. And one of the good things about him is that he doesn’t mind being on the bench. to sit or to be substituted, he is a real team player, always ready to help, at the start or during the match, he can line up in the middle, right, left or even number 10”.
Don’t forget that Diogo Jota missed the World Cup in Qatar in his long absence. In March of this year, the striker gave an interview to the newspaper Liverpool echo, in which he gave details about his physical problem. “It was a serious calf injury. A lot of people told me they had never seen anything like it before and we had to ask some specialists for help to try and get over it, which took a long time to treat due to its complexity.” , he said at the time.
Interestingly, Diogo Jota has been on Scott Minto’s radar for a long time. “I was a commentator at the championship games [segundo escalão do futebol inglês] for Sky Sports and I remember he went to Wolverhampton when they were champions [em 2017/18, tendo o avançado apontado 17 golos na competição]. I was surprised by the impact he had, he was absolutely fantastic, years later he deserved a transfer to Liverpool.” [no verão de 2020]to remind.
Who is a big fan of Diogo Jota and never gets tired of repeating it, is his coach Jürgen Klopp. “Thank God he saved us,” he said at the end of the game with Tottenham, minutes after being injured when he celebrated Portugal’s goal and grabbed his thigh after he started running. And on April 25, he wove words of praise for him. “He is an exceptional and very intelligent player, who can play in multiple positions. He is not the tallest, but he is a great threat in the air. He also has great timing with both feet and speed. He was only ‘stopped ‘.” due to the bad injury he had and other minor physical issues he had. He’s also one of those people I could talk to about football all day because he thinks a lot about the game,” he said.
Source: DN
