France international defender Ibrahima Konate has revealed he battled depression after the deaths of Liverpool teammate Diogo Jota and his own father, all while continuing to play professional football.
Portugal forward Jota and his brother Andre Silva died in a car crash last July. Konate's father, Hamady, passed away in January following a long illness.
Konate told France Inter radio: "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."
"It devastated me. I didn't have any interest in anything else at that point," Konate said of Jota's death. "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."
Konate also struggled with how to balance personal grief with professional commitments while his father was ill.
"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.
The 27-year-old, who is leaving Liverpool this summer, is in Didier Deschamps' 26-man squad for the upcoming World Cup.