On a chilly November night at the Estádio do Dragão, something happened that no one inside the stadium (and very few watching on television) will ever forget. Portugal were cruising to a routine World Cup qualifier against Armenia, but for two brief moments the football didn’t matter at all.

In the 2nd minute, with the ball rolling harmlessly in midfield, the giant screens suddenly went black. Then a single black-and-white photo appeared: a young boy wearing the number 2 shirt of Porto’s youth team, smiling shyly at the camera. The entire stadium fell silent. No announcement. No explanation. Just that picture, and the clock frozen at 2:00.

Nineteen seconds later the image vanished and the game continued as if nothing had happened.

Nineteen minutes after that (on the 21st minute exactly), it happened again. This time the screens showed a different boy, slightly older, wearing the red of Portugal’s Under-15s and the number 21. Same shy smile. Same hush from 50,000 people. Another 19 seconds of total silence. Then back to football.

Most fans were confused. Some checked their phones. A few in the lower tiers started clapping slowly. By the time the second tribute ended, whispers were spreading like wildfire through the stands: “It’s Jorge Costa… and Diogo Jota.”

But why now? And why in the middle of a World Cup qualifier against Armenia of all teams?

The answer is as beautiful as it is heartbreaking.

Twenty-five years ago, in the summer of 2000, two boys from the Porto academy (Jorge Costa, a towering centre-back destined for the first team, and Diogo Jota, a tiny winger who could already nutmeg anyone) made a promise to each other. If either of them ever played for the senior national team at the Dragão, they would stop the world for exactly 19 seconds in their old youth-team minutes: the 2nd for Jorge, the 21st for Diogo. Nineteen seconds because that was the exact time it took their youth coach to run from the bench to the centre circle the day they both scored hat-tricks in the same match, a 7-0 thrashing no one who was there ever forgot.

Everyone thought it was a childish pact, the kind of thing kids say and then life gets in the way.

Life did get in the way (tragically).

Jorge Costa, the boy in the number 2 shirt, never made it past the Under-19s. In December 2002, at just 17 years old, he was killed in a car accident on the icy roads outside Porto. The club retired his youth number. The academy hung his photo in the hallway. And then, quietly, the story faded.

Diogo Jota kept playing. He broke into the first team, moved to England, became a Premier League star, and finally earned his senior Portugal cap. But every time he returned to the Dragão, he would walk past that same photo in the academy corridor and feel the same stab of pain.

He never forgot the promise.

For years Jota tried to make the tribute happen. He spoke to the Portuguese FA. He begged Porto’s president. Every time the answer was the same: “We can’t stop a match for a personal gesture. It’s against regulations.” National-team games are sacred. Minutes are sacred. Even Cristiano Ronaldo doesn’t get the game paused for him.

Until Sunday night.

No one knows exactly how it was arranged. Some say Roberto Martínez, the Belgium-born coach with a Portuguese heart, pulled every string he had. Others swear Fernando Santos, the Euro 2016-winning manager now in an advisory role, made one phone call that no one could refuse. Whatever happened behind closed doors, UEFA gave its blessing for exactly 38 seconds of official playing time to be “suspended for technical reasons” (19 seconds twice).

The players knew. The referee knew. The fourth official held the board but never raised it. Even the Armenian team, briefed minutes before kick-off, stood respectfully still.

When the first image appeared at 2:00, Diogo Jota (who wasn’t even in the starting lineup) was shown on the sideline with his head bowed and tears rolling down his cheeks. Cristiano Ronaldo, captain for what might be the last time at the Dragão, placed a hand on Jota’s shoulder and didn’t move for the entire 19 seconds.

At 21:00, when his own childhood face flashed up, Jota finally broke. He fell to his knees right there on the touchline. Ronaldo and Bernardo Silva lifted him up, and for a moment the three of them stood in a tight embrace while 50,000 phones lit up the night like a galaxy.

Portugal would go on to win 4-0. The result barely mattered.

After the final whistle, Jota refused all interviews. He simply walked to the centre circle, placed a Porto youth shirt with the number 2 on the dragon emblem, kissed the badge, and pointed to the sky. The stadium lights dimmed. The big screens showed both photos side by side one last time.

Only then did the announcer finally speak, his voice cracking over the speakers:

“Tonight, in the 2nd and 21st minutes, we remembered two boys who once promised each other the world. One is watching from above. The other just kept his word.”

Somewhere in the stands, Jorge Costa’s mother clutched the scarf her son wore the day of his last match and sobbed without shame.

Football stops for nothing and no one.

Except, sometimes, for love.

And on Sunday night in Porto, the clock stopped twice (just long enough for a promise made by two kids in 2000 to finally, beautifully, impossibly come true).