“I still talk to him,” Ruben Neves says about Diogo Jota, his close friend and former Porto, Wolves and Portugal team-mate.
It is a year since Jota, while a Liverpool player, died in a car accident in Spain, 11 days after marrying his long-term partner Rute Cardoso.
His brother Andre Silva was also killed in the accident on 3 July 2025.
“Few people know this,” Neves, who is wearing Jota’s number 21 national shirt at the World Cup, told Portuguese TV show, external Alta Definicao.
“We have a WhatsApp group with Rute and Diogo, and it’s still there, and we continue to talk there.
“Whenever something special happens, I have the conversations archived on my WhatsApp so I can continue to send him messages.”
Jota, 28, was on his way back to Liverpool for pre-season when the car, a Lamborghini, left the road because of a tyre blowout while overtaking another vehicle.
He was making the journey to England by car and ferry as doctors had advised the forward, who celebrated winning the Premier League title two months earlier, against flying because he had undergone minor surgery.
One year on from his passing, Portugal play Croatia in Toronto on Thursday evening (00:00 BST on Friday morning) for a place in the last 16 at the World Cup.
It promises to be a highly emotional occasion for head coach Roberto Martinez, his players and staff, and the thousands of Portugal fans who have flooded into the Canadian city for the match.
“Diogo is our sun and our light,” says Martinez, who named Jota as an honorary ‘plus-one’ player when he announced his squad in May.
“We want to win the World Cup for him.”