France defender Ibrahima Konate said Wednesday he battled depression while continuing his football duties following the deaths of Liverpool teammate Diogo Jota and his own father.
Portugal forward Jota and his brother Andre Silva died in a car crash last July, while Konate’s father, Hamady, died in January after a long illness.
“There are low points, there’s depression. You can suffer from depression in football too, and there’s no need to be ashamed to say so,” Konate told France Inter radio.
“It’s true I’ve often heard players say they were suffering from depression and people on the outside not understanding because they were earning a lot of money. But that’s rubbish, and you shouldn’t say that.”
The 27-year-old, who confirmed earlier this week he will leave Liverpool this summer, said Jota’s death took a heavy toll.
“It devastated me. I didn’t have any interest in anything else at that point,” he said.
“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.”
At the same time, Konate was coping with his father’s illness, leaving him unsure how to balance personal grief with professional commitments.
“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,” he said.
“I didn’t know who to talk to about it, so I kept it all to myself.”
He said he returned early from compassionate leave after his father died in January to help Liverpool through an injury crisis but admitted he did not feel fully recovered.
“There was never a moment when I felt like I was on the mend. All of these tragic events happened so quickly, and as soon as I felt like I was getting my head above water, something else happened,” he said.
Konate, who has 27 caps for France, is part of Didier Deschamps’ 26-man squad for the World Cup.
