Konate reveals grief over Jota and father's deaths shaped his final Liverpool season

Ibrahima Konate has described how the deaths of Diogo Jota and his father Hamady within the space of a year left him unable to recover mentally during what will be his final season at Liverpool, with the centre-back set to leave Anfield on a free transfer this summer.

Speaking to France Inter, Konate said the loss of Jota — his team-mate and neighbour — hit him with particular force. “Even today it’s hard to believe,” he said. “His locker was still there in the dressing room, and every day when I was going to training he was coming with us. I remember when I found out I was in Los Angeles and I couldn’t believe it. It devastated me.”

Jota and his brother died in a car crash last summer, a tragedy that Konate said stripped him of all motivation. “I didn’t have any interest in anything else at that point,” he said. “He was my neighbour as well, so I shared a few more moments with him. It was something powerful that happened to all of us.”

The defender acknowledged that returning to football was driven by professional obligation as much as anything else. “You go back to football because you have no choice,” he said. “We’re employees at a club that pays us every month, so we have duties. There’s no way of getting over it, but you learn to live with it.”

Compounding that grief, Konate’s father Hamady was hospitalised for several weeks at the start of the season before dying in January. Konate admitted he struggled in silence throughout. “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 used the experience as a warning to others. “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,” he said. “The doctors 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 in late January to help an injury-depleted Liverpool squad, but said the gesture came at a personal cost. “There was never a moment when I felt like I was on the mend,” he said.

The 25-year-old has been unable to agree a contract extension at Anfield and is widely expected to join Real Madrid when his deal expires at the end of the season.