Jota: Celtic's fascinating footballer, thoughtful thinker and the 'mark in the world' ambition

If Celtic winger Jota wasn't one of the best players in the Scottish Premiership, a product of the famed Benfica youth academy, there may well have been a career as a mindset coach.

“I’m someone who tries not to look too far into the future and tries to understand just what the present brings to me and enjoy it. Because tomorrow isn’t granted for anyone, so I just enjoy myself and want to be happy.” It's a phrase a social media influencer without an original thought would be more than happy to paraphrase to put on Instagram over the background of some misty mountains or a sunset.

Jota, however, is a fascinating footballer and thoughtful thinker. He wants to live in the moment but there is a constant underlying desire to be better every day, to not rest or get complacent.

“Because I think there is no fun in remaining the same person or the same footballer," the 23-year-old said in the wake on Sunday’s Viaplay Cup success over Rangers. “We need to evolve, we need to be better. You guys, I think you will want to be better every day and I am no different, I want to be better every day as well. I know I will make a lot of errors, but those are the things that are probably going to make me go to another level, so that is my mindset.”

‘Want to make a mark in the world’

It is a mindset which translates to ambitions. For himself but more so the team. “We want to achieve bigger things," Jota said with the Scottish champions having claimed the Viaplay Cup. “We want to make a mark in the world and a mark in Celtic. We know the way we have to go, and for that to happen, we have to be humble and we need to work a lot every day because everything can change from one minute to another. We just have to be ready for that.

“I think with the amount of games we play each year, if we didn’t learn from our mistakes then something was definitely wrong, because we are not perfect. There is no team that is perfect in the world. We just need to understand in which phase of the games we are not that good, or where we need to improve, and then we just look at that and we improve. That is what we have been doing.”

He added: “We keep on making mistakes, but they are healthy mistakes, you know? Of course, there are mistakes we cannot commit, but the small details will then help us to be better in different competitions.”

The Portuguese winger started the League Cup final win over Celtic's rivals. (Photo by Craig Foy / SNS Group)

Due to the nature of Celtic’s identity and style, it is the forward players, like Jota or Kyogo Furuhashi, the match winner against Rangers at Hampden Park, or the mesmerising midfield which receive much of the plaudits. Yet, behind them is a defence which, across 64 league games, have conceded just 40 goals.

“I mean, we want to attack all the time and to recover the ball in high areas of the pitch, but sometimes we need to acknowledge that other teams have quality as well, and we need to adapt," Jota said. Football is about adapting to different circumstances, and we’re no different in that. We showed that we can do other sides of the game as well.”