'Diogo Jota made you forget who you support – he epitomised Jurgen Klopp's Liverpool'

The best tribute you can pay Diogo Jota is he was a footballer who made you forget your allegiance. A forward who played the game how it should be played. How you’d play it on the playground with your mates at break time.

He’d jink in and out of defenders like we all have in our dreams at one point or another before realising a career in professional football is out of the question. And that’s probably why he was so beloved amongst fans far and wide.

Playing with such freedom and passion was justification of the position he’d worked himself into. You’d never catch Diogo Jota moaning at a decision. You’d never catch Diogo Jota scrapping with an opponent.

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And for all the cruel, never-ending injuries he had to endure, you never once caught Diogo Jota bemoaning his luck. He simply got his head down and put in the hard graft to make sure he was back on the pitch and doing what he did best.

The fact that he was travelling back to Englandat the time of his death, going by car late at night after being advised to avoid flying in order to make sure he was back in time for pre-season testing really does say it all.

It truly is such a shame so much of his career was spent sidelined from one knock to the next, because if he’d managed to avoid injuries like team-mates Mo Salah and Sadio Mane, he’d have certified his position in the annals of Premier League folklore long ago and almost definitely would’ve turned his 63 strikes in the English top flight into triple figures.

Of course, his tragically premature death means he will forever hold a special place in history. But how cruel that it has to be this way.

As a Southampton fan who grew up watching Liverpool cherry-pick our top talent at will, it’s fair to say I wasn’t the biggest fan of theirs. But the culture Jurgen Klopp created made it impossible to hate them.

And Jota epitomised that. Not only was he so easy on the eye on the pitch, but he was also just a top, top guy off it. Not a bad word has or will be said about him.

The outpouring of emotion from the football community is testament to both the footballer and the man Diogo Jota was. A class act who played football for the love of the game - the game that has lost a real gem.

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