Arne Slot has revealed that Liverpool’s owners, Fenway Sports Group, have paid the remainder of Diogo Jota’s contract to his family.
The Portuguese forward tragically passed away in July after a vehicle he was travelling in crashed in the Spanish province of Zamora. Jota’s brother, Andre Silva, also lost his life in the accident.
Reports emerged in the following days that Liverpool intended to pay out the remainder of Jota’s contract to his family. Two months on and Arne Slot has confirmed those reports as he praised Liverpool’s owners. He told TNT Sports, per the Mirror:
“Unfortunately, we had to bring one player more in than we were… than what was the plan. That’s why our spending was higher than intended,” he said.
“The grief of the city, that is what makes it for me so special to work at this club. To work at a club where there is success and there is a parade, of course this parade is bigger than any parade everywhere around the world. But the way they conducted, the fans themselves, after that tragedy.
“How many flowers there were, all the memorials, I can almost get emotional thinking about it. It’s unbelievable what our fans have done. And our players as well, the way they have conducted themselves in and around the funeral. And then we have to train again. And there are moments where I feel, ‘What must his wife and his children feel now?’.
“Because it sounds so hard… our life continues. People expect from me that I prepared them forever. And that sometimes feels a bit difficult, knowing how hard it is for the family and for the parents. The phase they are still going through and will go through for the rest of their lives. I said how proud I felt about how the fans reacted but ownership…
“Owners are mainly criticised, like managers, but the way they’ve handled this situation, by paying his wife and his children all the money from the contract [is commendable]. Maybe people think it’s normal, but it is not in football.”
Jota is believed to have earned £140,000 on a week-by-week basis at Liverpool, with his contract set to expire in the summer of 2027. Therefore, Liverpool paid out around £14.5m to his family.
Liverpool’s chairman, Tom Werner, revealed that the club reached out to Jota’s widow, Rute Cardoso, during a recent appearance on The Overlap US. He said: “It’s always a tragedy when someone dies before their time. But his death really did hit everybody because he was so beloved.
“It was immediately important to us that we reach out to his widow and to make sure that she understood that we are a family. It is a cliché but we do think of ourselves as a family and we wanted to make sure she was well taken care of financially, and her children.
“It’s very important for us to demonstrate that, whatever happens, we care about the footballer but we care even more about the individual.”