"There was never a moment when I felt like I was on the mend." That line from Ibrahima Konate, speaking to French radio station France Inter, says more about Liverpool's 2024/25 season than any league table could.
The centre-back, who will leave Anfield this summer after five years — heading to Real Madrid on a free transfer having failed to agree a new deal — has spoken at length about a campaign defined not by football, but by loss. First Diogo Jota. Then his own father.
A dressing room that never fully recovered
Jota and his brother André Silva died in a car crash in Spain last July, on his way back to Merseyside for pre-season. Konate found out while he was in Los Angeles.
"I couldn't believe it. It devastated me. I didn't have any interest in anything else at that point."
He describes Jota's locker staying in the dressing room all season — the man still there, in a way, every single morning. Konate was his neighbour. He knew him beyond the training pitch. That proximity makes grief harder to compartmentalise, and it showed in his performances during the autumn, when Konate was one of several Liverpool players visibly struggling to function at their usual level.
Then, in January, his father Hamady died after a prolonged illness. Konate had been aware his father didn't have long, but says the speed of it still caught him off guard. He cut short his compassionate leave to help an injury-hit Liverpool squad — a decision that now sounds almost painfully selfless.
Why money doesn't insulate anyone from this
Konate's most important words weren't about football at all. He spoke directly about depression — the real kind, not the casual usage — and pushed back hard against the idea that a footballer's salary makes psychological suffering somehow less legitimate.
"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."
He's right, and it needed saying. The conversation around mental health in elite sport has moved forward, but the dismissal — 'they earn too much to be depressed' — persists in comment sections and pub debates. Konate naming it publicly, from one of Europe's highest-profile stages, carries weight.
His advice to anyone keeping their pain to themselves: talk. He didn't, and he's clear-eyed about the cost of that choice. "I didn't know who to talk to about it, so I kept it all to myself."
Liverpool fans will remember a centre-back who was one of the best defenders in the country at his peak. They should also remember the season he played through all of this — quietly, without most of them knowing — and still turned up.
