Why Luís Diaz is the new Diogo Jota
Luís Diaz played in an unfamiliar centre forward position against Bayer Leverkusen in the Champions League. He scored a hat-trick from the Diogo Jota zone.
Liverpool maintained their perfect start to the 2024/25 Champions League by beating Bayer Leverkusen 4-0 at Anfield. If the outcome wouldn’t have shocked you after watching the first hour of the match, the final score line certainly would have.
At that point, the Reds had mustered just shy of one expected goal, taking 13 shots to do so. With two reasonable chances in the preceding five minutes, one of which was of sufficient quality to be deemed ‘big’ by Opta, the pressure was at least starting to build.
The game needed to burst open though. The surgeon was Curtis Jones, the scalpel his sublime through ball to set up Luis Díaz for the opening goal. With Diogo Jota injured and Darwin Núñez rested, Arne Slot made the surprise decision to start the Colombian as his centre forward. The move paid off perfectly.
In the half hour or so from Jones’ pass through to full time, Liverpool amassed 3.2 expected goals. Leverkusen had logged 312 games in the FBRef database prior to this, with that xG tally equalling the most they had conceded in an entire match. Only three times under Xabi Alonso had they faced more than 2.0, this level of quickfire attacking onslaught simply does not happen to his side.
The first goal inevitably meant that Leverkusen had to open up, which obviously helped. The move leading to the Reds’ first Opta-defined big chance of the match - which Mohamed Salah sliced wide following a pass from Ryan Gravenberch - required a lengthy build-up of 25 actions. The team average for the season for this obscure metric was 8.8 at that point. Yet none of the final four golden opportunities Liverpool fashioned needed more than six actions in the sequence. They were quicker, sharper and all converted too.
Díaz maintained his unerring ability to put big chances away this term. He, Jota and Salah have all had 11 (excluding penalties) in 2024/25, with Lucho having scored eight (72.7 per cent) while the other pair are on four goals apiece. Maybe this white-hot success rate can’t last for the Reds’ number seven, but the Jota-esque nature of his performance against Leverkusen suggests perhaps it can.
A look at Liverpool history shows that Díaz will cool off in time. The closest parallel is Roberto Firmino, who scored nine of 12 in 2021/22. That was across a whole season, though. Even if the Colombian only doubles his total across the rest of this campaign, no Red with at least 22 has converted more than 54 per cent of them (from 2018/19 onward).
He was a strange choice to play centrally on Tuesday night. Per Transfermarkt, Díaz had just six previous appearances across his career in that position. Four of them were for Junior FC in Colombia over half a decade ago, with one for his national team last year (and SofaScore suggests otherwise with regards to that one anyway).
With Liverpool, Díaz had 12 minutes as centre forward in last seasons 5-1 Carabao Cup win over West Ham. While the Reds scored twice during that time, he only had one touch in the penalty box and didn’t fire off a shot. Not that Slot was the manager then, of course, but it was hardly a video he might have watched to help him make the call he did.
“I think [Jonathan] Tah is one of the best defenders in Germany, if not the best, and he likes to play against a target man so I chose to play Lucho [Díaz] from the left and the middle to surprise him with runs in behind,” Slot said after the game as his explanation for why he played the 27-year-old where he did. The potent form of Salah and Cody Gakpo on their respective flanks perhaps played a part too, with the Liverpool head coach opting to keep them there even though they have more experience centrally than Díaz.
His hat-trick was not perfect in the sense of being scored with each foot and his head. It was, however, pleasingly delivered with finishes to each third of the lower half of the goal.
The fact Díaz’ first strike was rated as a 0.29 post-shot xG finish from a 0.70 expected goal chance shows why you shouldn’t listen to stats for individual shots. It was perfectly executed.
It was not this reason that brought the notion of this former Porto man being similar to another one, Jota. There were shades of how the Portuguese has played this season, in terms of being heavily involved when not involved that much. Despite having just 33 touches against Leverkusen, his fewest when playing over 65 minutes this season, Díaz was able to fire off four attempts while also delivering eight shot creating actions. The latter included the pre-assist for the one goal he didn’t score.
But it was his shot locations which really brought a Jota comparison to mind. A tweet from The Athletic contained the below graphic. Notice how the goals were all struck in a zone between the left of the penalty spot and the goalpost on that side.
I’ve checked with the land registry, this is prime Jota real estate. His success there will be partly down to playing in a team with creative talents of the calibre of Trent Alexander-Arnold and Salah on the right. As Bob Paisley likely apocryphally said on an FA coaching course when being told about crosses to the area of maximum opportunity: “what, the back post?”
As you can see from Jota’s Premier League goal map with Liverpool (below, via Understat), it is a section of the penalty box in which he has wreaked havoc. Díaz saw this green Rorschach test and inflicted it onto a Bundesliga champion side that had lost twice in all competitions since the start of last season.
Maybe we never see Lucho in that position again. Núñez will likely take the berth against Aston Villa on Saturday, with Jota’s return reportedly not far away either. But Díaz proved he can play like Diogo, score like Diogo, grunt and squeak and squawk like Diogo. The Bayer backline may not be the only top defenders given a headache by Liverpool’s newest centre forward this season.