Diogo Jota isn’t just one of the Premier League’s most dangerous forwards – he’s also a whizz at FIFA.
The Liverpool star celebrated his winner against Tottenham by sitting on the turf, pretending to hold a video game controller – he’s a huge FIFA enthusiast and even has his own eSports team, Diogo Jota eSports.
Speaking exclusively to FourFourTwo, Jota revealed that he can provide a seriously tough test to those on his team who play FIFA for a living – in 2021, he was briefly ranked world No.1 on FIFA’s Ultimate Team Champions leaderboard, after winning 30 matches in a row.
“I often get involved in competitions with the professional FIFA players, which happen once or twice a month, and I do win some games,” he said.
“I have an eSports team and sometimes I do better than my own players – not because they’re bad, but because I can actually compete with them! That feels really nice – when you can compete with people who only do that for a living.”
As a result, there isn’t a long list of Liverpool team-mates queuing up to try to beat him. “I don’t think there is, to be honest,” he said.
“I played Trent Alexander-Arnold in the final in the ePremier League Invitational during lockdown; I was representing Wolves back then and he was representing Liverpool, and I beat him. He doesn’t play that often nowadays, so I don’t think there’s a guy who could beat me!”
During his time with the Portuguese national team, has he ever taken on Cristiano Ronaldo at FIFA? “I don’t think Ronaldo is a fan of video games,” Jota chuckled. If CR7 thought there was a chance of defeat, the chances are he’d probably avoid playing at all. “Yeah, exactly!” Jota smiled. “He’s very competitive.”
