GONDOMAR, Portugal July 4 (Reuters) - Prime Minister Luis Montenegro joined members of Diogo Jota’s family for a private wake on Friday in the Liverpool footballer’s hometown in northern Portugal following his death alongside his brother Andre Silva in a car crash in Spain.

Jota’s longtime agent Jorge Mendes was also seen joining the family that included wife Rute Cardoso, who had married the footballer just weeks earlier. Montenegro spent almost half an hour with the family before leaving without making a statement.

A convoy of hearses carrying the bodies left for Gondomar near Porto on Thursday evening from the morgue of Puebla de Sanabria, near where the Lamborghini the brothers were traveling in had veered off the road and burst into flames after midnight on Thursday. Police said they suspected a tyre had burst.

A public wake is expected to take place at a chapel in Gondomar from 4:00 p.m. (1500 GMT) and a funeral on Saturday at a church nearby at 10:00 a.m. local time, the office of Gondomar’s mayor said.

The death of forward Jota at the age of 28 has jolted the world of football, with messages of homage pouring in from former teammates, clubs, national leaders and fans.

Outside Liverpool’s Anfield stadium fans left flowers, scarves and handwritten notes, many from children.

“I never thought there would be something that would frighten me of going back to Liverpool after the (summer) break,” Liverpool teammate Mohamed Salah said on Instagram.

“Teammates come and go but not like this. It’s going to be extremely difficult to accept that Diogo won’t be there when we go back,” he added.

Football clubs including Paris St Germain, who have several Portugal internationals in their squad, Bayern Munich, Chelsea and Real Madrid observed a moment of silence during training for their matches at the Club World Cup in the United States.

MOURNING HIS FRIEND

Chelsea manager Enzo Maresca said on Thursday that forward Pedro Neto was weighing whether to play in Friday’s quarter-final against Palmeiras, as the Portuguese international mourns the tragic death of his close friend.

Jota’s manager at Liverpool, Arne Slot, said in a statement on Thursday that his thoughts were with his family.

“My message to them is very clear – you will never walk alone,” Slot said, using the words of the team’s anthem.

“For us as a club, the sense of shock is absolute. Diogo was not just our player. He was a loved one to all of us. He was a teammate, a colleague, a workmate and in all of those roles he was very special,” the Dutchman added.

In Gondomar, a town of about 160,000 people in the Porto metropolitan area that is known for artisanal gold and filigree jewelry, residents were struggling to come to terms with the sudden death of a local hero.

At the Diogo Jota Academy in Gondomar – whose motto is “It’s not important where we come from, but where we are going” – people placed candles, flowers and scarves and shirts from the various clubs he played for and from the Portuguese national team in tribute to the player.

Jota opened the academy in 2022 for children aged 6-9 at the Gondomar Football Club where he himself played for 10 years as a child.

It was at Gondomar’s high school that he met his wife. They began dating aged 15 when in the same class and she became a pillar in his life.

When they were 19, they moved to Madrid together, when Jota was transferred from the small Portuguese club Pacos de Ferreira to Atletico Madrid.

“Besides being his girlfriend and best friend, I’m his number one fan,” Cardoso told the newspaper ‘A Bola’ at the time.

Jota was making his way back to Liverpool by car after he was told he should avoid plane travel for up to 6 weeks following lung surgery to address a fractured rib, his physiotherapist Miguel Goncalves told broadcaster Now late on Thursday.

Goncalves said Jota was recovering well from the pneumothorax surgery and that he had planned to take a ferry to the UK from Spain.