"There was never a moment when I felt like I was on the mend." That's Ibrahima Konate summing up what his final season at Liverpool actually was — not a farewell campaign, but a sustained fight to keep his head above water while the people around him disappeared.
Speaking to French radio station France Inter, the departing centre-back opened up about the compounding grief that defined his 2024/25 year. It started with Diogo Jota's death in July — Konate's neighbour, a teammate who "just wanted to be happy and have a good time" — and ended with the loss of his own father, Hamady, in January.
A dressing room that still felt haunted
Jota's locker stayed in place all season. Konate trained past it every single day. "Every day when I was going to training, he was coming with us," he said. There's a particular kind of grief that comes from a space refusing to change when everything else has.
He found out about Jota's death while in Los Angeles. "I couldn't believe it. It devastated me. I didn't have any interest in anything else at that point." And yet, weeks later, he was back on the pitch because, as he put it plainly: "We're employees at a club that pays us every month. We have duties."
That's not a complaint. That's just the reality professional footballers rarely say out loud.
The weight he carried alone
While his father was in hospital for weeks at the start of the season, Konate told nobody. He didn't know whether to go home or stay. He kept it to himself — and now says that was the wrong call. "When you're feeling down or something's going on, you need to talk to those around you." He learned that the hard way.
When the doctors told the family his father didn't have long to live, Konate cut short his compassionate leave anyway. A depleted Liverpool squad needed him. He returned. His father passed in January.
"As soon as I felt like I was getting my head above water, something else happened."
His performances dipped during the autumn. That's the context behind those numbers — not form, not fitness, but a person trying to function through sustained loss. Any betting market that written him off as declining this season was reading entirely the wrong story.
Konate leaves Anfield this summer on a free transfer, with Real Madrid expected to be his next destination. He's 27, heading into what should be his peak years. But the more striking thing he leaves behind isn't the transfer — it's the message he delivered about depression in football.
"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." He pushed back hard on the idea that footballers can't be depressed because they earn well. "That's rubbish and you shouldn't say that."
He's right. And it needed saying.
