Why Cristiano Ronaldo Missed the Funeral: A Data Scientist’s Cold Analysis of Culture, Duty, and the Algorithm of Absence

I didn’t fly to Porto for the funeral.

I was on my yacht in Mallorca when news broke—Diogo Jota and his brother Andre Silva gone after a tire blowout on Highway A-52. I saw the photos before I posted my tribute. Not because I didn’t care. Because I was running an algorithm.

My team at Inter Milan trained yesterday while I calibrated sensor data from Portugal’s national team logs. My R scripts pulled attendance patterns over five years. The code said: if captain doesn’t show, check emotional entropy.

The press called it ‘inexplicable.’ That’s lazy journalism.

Real grief isn’t measured in likes or €5.5M yachts. It’s measured in proximity to loss—and who you’re accountable to.

I know Diogo wasn’t just a player—he was part of my model. I learned his last message before crash: ‘We were together in the national team.’ So why did I stay? Because presence isn’t binary. It’s not whether you’re there—it’s whether your actions reflect what you owe.

My father taught me: when your tribe grieves, your code must reflect that silence too.

They call me cold。 But cold is what keeps the model honest.