Celtic winger Jota has revealed he had to confront personal "demons" during an extended spell on the sidelines, while stressing that he will not "rush" his journey back to complete match fitness. The 27-year-old Portuguese attacker suffered cruciate ligament damage in April 2025, finally making his first-team return last weekend when he featured in a 2-0 away win against Motherwell.
Building on that milestone, Jota stepped off the bench once more during Sunday's emphatic 7-1 Scottish Premiership home victory over Hearts, maintaining that the difficult road to recovery has bolstered his mental resilience. "I've met some demons and I've had some good talks with them," Jota said. "We developed a good relationship and we are all on the same table nowadays and we can laugh about everything that happened. If you don't grow from a situation like this, it's because you didn't learn anything. I could step away, see different things from other perspectives and value some stuff that maybe I wasn't valuing before. I have a clear idea of what I want, what I am. There's no lost time because I grew a lot. It had to be what it had to be and I didn't lose. I actually gained because I'm way stronger nowadays."
In the short term, Jota's appearances will remain strictly limited to domestic competition, as he was omitted from Celtic's Europa League squad ahead of Thursday's 20:00 BST fixture against visiting Celta Vigo in Glasgow. Despite that continental absence, the winger is savouring every opportunity on the pitch, pointing to his sheer devotion to the game as the catalyst that sustained him through his darkest rehabilitation periods. "My love for football is immense," he explained. "Maybe someone else wouldn't want to come back because of the struggle or some guys just don't have that in themselves. That was my fuel to keep on working every day, to be healthy and fit, even if things weren't going that way."
Looking to the future, Jota remains adamant about taking a measured, patient approach rather than forcing his physical progression. "This is my dream. It's my passion. So there's moments where you reflect, there's moments where you're down and you cannot see any light but that doesn't mean that you stop believing. You just need to find another way," Jota added. "My aim was always to come back fit, whatever time I need to take because I still have a long career in front of me and I'm still young. So there's no rush, let's do everything correctly and just trust the process."