Ibrahima Konate opens up on depression after deaths of Jota and father

France defender Ibrahima Konate said on Wednesday he battled depression following the deaths of Liverpool teammate Diogo Jota and his father while continuing to fulfil his football duties.

Portugal forward Jota and his brother Andre Silva died in a car crash last July, while Konate’s father, Hamady, passed away in January after a long illness.

“There are low points, there’s depression. You can suffer from depression in football too; there’s no need to be ashamed to say so,” Konate told France Inter radio.

“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 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 had taken a heavy toll on him. “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.

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“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 lost his father in January and returned early from compassionate leave 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 a part of Didier Deschamps’ 26-man squad for the World Cup.