Liverpool defender Ibrahima Konate has spoken publicly for the first time about the depression he suffered after the deaths of teammate Diogo Jota and his father Hamady, describing the turmoil that marked his final season at Anfield.
Jota, the Portugal forward, and his brother Andre Silva were killed in a car crash last July. Konate, who lived near Jota on Merseyside, said the tragedy left him shattered. “It devastated me. I didn’t have any interest in anything else at that point,” he told France Inter radio. “You go back to football because you have no choice. We’re employees at a club that pays us every month, so we have duties. We had no choice but to go back on the field and play for him and his family – as well as ourselves. There’s no way of getting over it, but you learn to live with it.”
“Ibrahima Konate opens up about depression after teammate Diogo Jota and his father died.”
While grieving for his friend, Konate was also carrying the burden of his father’s long illness. Hamady Konate died in January. “I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know whether I should go home and stop playing, because the team needed me too,” the 27-year-old recalled. “I didn’t know who to talk to about it, so I kept it all to myself. And this is the advice I’d give to everyone: when you’re feeling down or something’s going on, you need to talk to those around you. It can help you and do you good. I didn’t talk about it and kept it to myself. The doctors then told us he didn’t have long to live, but we didn’t know it would happen so quickly.”
Konate returned early from compassionate leave to help Liverpool avert an injury crisis at the end of January, but conceded things were never quite right. He made 51 appearances across the season. The France international, who joined Liverpool from RB Leipzig in 2021, has confirmed he will leave Anfield this summer and is closing in on a move to Real Madrid.
“There are low points, there’s depression,” Konate said. “You can suffer from depression in football too; there’s no need to be ashamed to say so. It’s true that I’ve often heard players say they were suffering from depression and that fans or people on the outside didn’t understand because they were earning a lot of money. But no, that’s rubbish and you shouldn’t say that. Depression is personal; it’s deep inside you. When you’re depressed, it starts in the heart, goes up to the brain and takes over your whole body. For me, that’s what’s hard, and we need to talk about it.”