Diogo Jota’s wife rested her head on casket wet from tears

Not once did her gaze leave her husband’s casket, though at times it seemed she might buckle and succumb to the paralysing agony of it all.

Some among the crowd lowered their heads as the procession passed. Mostly out of respect. But also because it felt somehow indecent to bear close witness to this woman’s torturous suffering.

Only two weeks ago, Rute Cardoso and Liverpool‘s Diogo Jota, both 28, exchanged wedding vows before family and friends. No more perfect celebration of their happiness, they said, could be devised. Diogo declared himself supremely lucky.

Now Rute, dressed in white, was helping to carry the man with the magical feet and joyful heart to his grave.

He was killed along with his brother Andre Silva, 25, after the Lamborghini they were travelling in crashed and burst into flames on a Spanish highway in the early hours of Thursday morning.

At the end of their joint funeral service, Schubert’s Ave Maria, which was played at Jota’s wedding, drifted from the small baroque church in Gondomar, near Porto, northern Portugal.

A deep bell began slowly tolling. Supported by her sister, Rute’s fingers clung to the underside of her husband’s coffin as it was carried across the courtyard. When it seemed she might falter, she closed her eyes and rested her forehead fleetingly on the casket lid, wet from her tears.

Family and friends, including footballers who flew in from all corners of the globe, had gathered in the 17th-century Igreja Matriz church and heard the Bishop of Porto, D. Manuel Linda, send a message to the couple’s three children – sons Dinis, four, Duarte, two, and eight-month-old baby daughter Mafalda.

The bishop said: ‘At this moment you are suffering immensely or perhaps not because you do not realise it. The ones who suffer a lot are your mother and your grandparents.

‘Seeing the mortal remains of a child must be a greater torment, but when there are two urns there are no words…

‘If it is difficult to see an adult cry, it is even more difficult to see a child cry. I send you a special greeting for your mother and grandparents.’

Like Rute, Jota’s parents, Joaquim and Isabel Silva, were still basking in the wedding afterglow when they got the news that their two sons had died.

‘That poor couple. Only because of the grandchildren will they find the strength to carry on,’ said a family friend, expressing the sentiments of many.

Both coffins were carried through the front doors of the church to the sound of violins and applause in a procession led by two priests at 10am.

Jota’s Liverpool team-mates flew in overnight. They included Virgil van Dijk, the club’s captain, and Andrew Robertson, who carried red wreaths in the shape of football shirts emblazoned with Jota’s number 20 and his brother’s number 30. Former Liverpool players, including Jordan Henderson and James Milner, were also present.

Jota and his brother were 190 miles into a trip from Porto to Santander, where he planned to take a ferry to England, when they crashed in the Spanish province of Zamora.

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