- Diogo Jota, 28, was laid to rest at Gondomar cemetery in Portugal on Saturday
Cristiano Ronaldo has been pictured for the first time since opting not to attend the funeral of Diogo Jota, who tragically passed away following a traffic accident last week.
Jota, 28, and his brother, Andre Silva, 25, were killed when their car crashed in the early hours of Thursday morning in northern Spain.
The accident came just 11 days after Jota had married childhood sweetheart Rute Cardoso, also 28, who is the mother of his two sons Dinis, four, and Duarte, two as well as his baby daughter Mafalda, who is just eight months old.
The pair were laid to rest at Gondomar cemetery in Portugal on Saturday afternoon, with many of Jota’s Portuguese international team-mates, including Bernardo Silva and Ruben Neves, paying their respects to the forward.
However, the Portugal captain was not one of them, and it’s believed that he decided not to go to the funeral due to previous tragedies that he has suffered in his life.
Two days on from the funeral, Ronaldo has been pictured holidaying on a yacht in Mallorca with Georgina Rodriguez as he continues to come to terms with his Jota’s passing.
It has been reported that by Portuguese media that the 40-year-old was on board the yacht when many had expected him to fly to Gondomar, a muncipality near Porto.
According to Portuguese outlet Record, Ronaldo may have opted not to attend the event due to sensitivities surrounding the death of his father, Jose Diniz Aveiro, who died in September 2005 – when Ronaldo was just 20 years old.
Ronaldo was shocked to hear of Jota’s passing but is said to have not made the journey as he did not wish for his presence to overshadow the importance of people paying their respects to Jota and his brother.
While the Al-Nassr forward has come in for criticism from some quarters over his absence – he was publicly defended by his sister Katia on social media.
Taking to Instagram, she wrote: ‘When my father died, in addition to the pain of loss, we had to deal with a flood of cameras and curious onlookers at the cemetery and everywhere we went.
‘And attention was not what it is today in terms of access… At no time were we (the children) able to leave the chapel; it was only possible at the time of the burial, such was the commotion.
‘At the funeral, there were presidents, coaches of the national team at the time, such as Luís Filipe Scolari, etc. I don’t remember seeing any of them. And they certainly greeted me. The pain blinded me.
‘About pain/family and real support… You will never know what it means until you go through it. If someone sends me a message criticising anything my brother does, I will block it (completely ignore it), that is, they will only do it once.
‘It’s getting tiring. The fanaticism. The criticism for nothing, I repeat nothing… Sick society… We all have families.
‘It is absurdly shameful to watch TV channels/commentators/social networks emphasising an absence (wise) rather than respectfully honouring the pain of a mutilated family destroyed by the loss of two brothers. I am even ashamed to watch. Regrettable.
‘And so the world goes… Society and opinion. Today they are worthless. They themselves have become bottomless pits. I feel sorry… And war is also like that. Believe me. Human evil is also a war. And every day we have to fight against it. And so it goes.’
More to follow.
