By admin 
After Cristiano Ronaldo’s call for lifetime bans to be issued to those Al Taawoun fans who were filmed chanting the name of the late Diogo Jota to taunt Al Hilal midfielder Rúben Neves, the Saudi Pro League have dished out a different set of punishments.
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Rather than individual penalties, all Al Taawoun fans have been banned from attending the club’s next two home fixtures while the club have been fined 100,000 riyals ($26,660). It was judged that there had been a breach of article 51.2 in the SAFF Disciplinary Code.
“Any team where several individuals threaten or harass match officials or other persons during a match has committed an offense,” was the crime Al Taawoun have been charged for. The minimum penalty is a $3,000 fine, so the SAFF disciplinary and ethics committee clearly felt it was a serious offense given they scaled that up by a factor of eight.
“”The fans of Al Taawoun chanted phrases and slogans that violated the provisions of the disciplinary and ethics regulations, and the committee decided to increase the penalty,” a statement from the Saudi Football Federation read.
Loss of Jota Still As Raw As Ever
It’s been more than a year since the soccer world was sent into mourning by the traumatic news that Jota and his brother André Silva had perished in a motor accident in Spain, but the wound is still as raw as that dark day in July 2025. Jota, 28 at the time, had been driving to catch the ferry back to England after being advised by Liverpool’s medical team to avoid flying after undergoing minor surgery.
Jota and his brother were halfway there when his tyre blew out while overtaking another vehicle. Just five days earlier, Jota had revealed on social media that he had gotten married to his long-term partner and the mother of his three sons, Rute Cardoso.
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Neves offered one of the most heart-wrenching tributes while he was still coming to terms with the loss of his Portuguese compatriot, teammate and dear friend. “I’m going to make sure you’re always present and I’ll make sure that your loved ones never lack anything while you’re there, far away but thinking of us, waiting for us,” the former Wolverhampton Wanderers midfielder wrote at the time.
“Life has brought us together and now it can’t tear us apart.”
In that light, Neves was a particularly cruel recipient of the sort of tragedy chants which have plagued the sport for decades.
Jota’s former club, Liverpool, have been cursed by more than one tragedy during their existence which opposition fans have weaponized. Back in 2023, a fan was given a four-year ban from matches after wearing a Manchester United shirt which made an offensive reference to the 97 Liverpool fans who died during the Hillsborough Stadium disaster in 1989.
No club is innocent in this abhorrent practice which, as Neves painfully discovered, is still as prevalent as ever.
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