The Triangle of Diogo Jota
The Portugual international can do something which few other forwards can
Diogo Jota must consider his recent career and chuckle at the absurdity of it all. After a year without scoring he won’t be troubling Erling Haaland for the Golden Boot, but four goals in a week mean he’ll head to West Ham tonight in positive mood.
He’ll also have a chance to become the first Liverpool player to score two goals in three successive league games since Luis Suárez held an individual goal of the season contest against Norwich in 2013. Jota’s first goal at Elland Road truly unblocked a dam.
In his next 85 minutes of playing time, the 26-year-old added another three strikes to his tally. While the trio obviously can’t be considered a hat-trick, they were ‘perfect’; a right foot strike at Leeds was followed by a point-blank header and left-footed swivel-and-score in front of the Kop.
It is far from the first time he has done this sort of thing. The below table details Jota’s 38 Liverpool goals. The patches in green highlight runs of three goals which were each scored with a different body part, while pink denotes where the same foot was used three times in a row (and though some streaks overlap, you should get the idea.
The obvious thing to note is that there are more ‘perfect’ trios than single body part sets. Less apparent but worth noting is that for the strikes with available data, a toal of 11.5 xG became 18.9 in the post-shot model. Shots which became goals have that confirmation bias baked in - a player won’t score with terrible efforts that often - but our boy Diogo is sure one fine finisher when at his best.
His ambidexterity with his feet is well established. Jota scored 33 league goals for Wolverhampton Wanderers with an 18-15 split between his right and left foot. The mathmatically minded among you will have noticed that doesn’t leave any room for headers. He got one in the Europa League for Wolves and one in the Primeira Liga for Porto in 2016/17 but otherwise Jota was a feet-only goal scorer.
His evolution into one of the best headers around therefore deserves to be talked about more. Liverpool’s number 20 was the joint-top scorer of headed goals in the top flight last season (along with Harry Kane and Danny Welbeck) and also led the way in the UEFA qualification process for the last World Cup. Despite scoring 145 fewer goals for the Reds than Mohamed Salah, Jota leads the Egyptian 10-7 for netting headers.
Teammate Darwin Núñez seems to be following a similar developmental pattern. He scored 67 per cent of his league and European goals for Benfica with his stronger foot, yet has a 6-5-4 split between right foot, head and left with Liverpool. A quirk of a small sample it may be but the Uruguayan is becoming more varied and only has one set of three consecutive goals for his new club with the same body part.
For now, though, Jota is the Reds’ multi-functional master. West Ham’s defenders may not know which way to turn.