Ronaldo Demands Lifetime Stadium Bans After Fans Mock Neves With Jota Chants

• A section of fans repeatedly chanted the name of the late Diogo Jota at Al-Hilal midfielder Ruben Neves before Saturday’s 6-0 win over Al-Taawoun in the Saudi Pro League.
• Cristiano Ronaldo, Neves’ Portugal teammate, called for the supporters responsible to receive lifetime stadium bans, saying “this is no longer football.”
• Neves wears the number 21 shirt for Portugal in tribute to Jota, who died alongside his brother Andre Silva in a car crash in Spain last July at the age of 28.

Neves Wears Jota’s Number as a Tribute. This Weekend, Strangers Turned the Name Into a Taunt

Before Al-Hilal’s Saudi Pro League match against Al-Taawoun on Saturday, a section of the crowd picked out one visiting player and would not let up. They chanted a single word, over and over: “Jota.”

Footage from inside the stadium showed Ruben Neves turning toward the noise. He clapped back at the fans, sarcastically, then pointed up at the sky. He did not smile.

The name belonged to Diogo Jota, the Liverpool forward who died in a car crash in the Spanish province of Zamora last July at the age of 28. He died alongside his brother, Andre Silva. Neves had played beside Jota at Wolverhampton Wanderers and with Portugal, and the two were close friends away from the pitch.

Al-Hilal won the match 6-0. By full time, almost nobody was discussing the score.

A Tribute Turned Into a Taunt

Neves wears the number 21 shirt for the Portugal national team in Jota’s memory. He also has a tattoo on his calf showing the two of them embracing. Both details trace back to a friendship built at Molineux, where the pair were team-mates before Jota’s move to Liverpool in 2020.

Asked about the chanting afterward, Neves gave a short, pointed answer. “I hope they don’t go to pray, because God doesn’t deserve that,” he told reporters.

He did not elaborate further, and Al-Hilal had not issued a statement on the incident by the time of writing.

Ronaldo Calls for Bans

Cristiano Ronaldo, who played alongside both Neves and Jota for the Portugal national team, captains the side and remains its record goalscorer, used social media to call for the fans responsible to be barred from stadiums for good.

“The league must take action and punish this kind of fan behaviour,” Ronaldo wrote. “This is no longer football, and there have to be limits. People who behave like this should never be allowed to enter a stadium again.”

Ronaldo plays his club football for Al-Nassr, a direct rival of Neves’ Al-Hilal in the same Saudi Pro League. The two clubs have one of the fiercest rivalries in Saudi Arabian football, and their supporters are not used to seeing a player from one side defend a player from the other in public. Ronaldo’s statement carried no trace of that rivalry at all. It was aimed entirely at the fans on the other side of it, not at Al-Hilal itself.

BBC Sport has contacted both Al-Hilal and Al-Taawoun for comment. Neither club had responded publicly by the time of writing, and the Saudi Pro League has not announced any investigation or sanction over the chanting.

The Friendship Behind the Anger

Jota signed for Liverpool from Wolves in 2020 and went on to score 65 goals in 182 appearances for the club. He earned 49 caps for Portugal after his 2019 debut, scoring 14 international goals. News of his death last July, alongside his brother, reached players and supporters across English and Portuguese football, given how many people inside the game had shared a dressing room with him at some point in his career.

WRITTEN BY

Jarrod

Jarrod Partridge is the Founder of Futbol Chronicle and an accredited journalist with over 30 years of experience following international football. A member of the AIPS International Sports Press Association, Jarrod has covered matches at stadiums around the world, bringing first-hand insight to every match report, player profile, and tactical analysis he writes.

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