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Times
05-07-2025
- Sport
- Times
Dressing rooms can be a refuge — how football clubs cope with tragedy
Liverpool begin pre-season on Tuesday and in the dressing room at the AXA Training Centre there will be an empty seat between Harvey Elliott and Kostas Tsimikas. Missing will be not a friend to two people but a friend to everyone. His name is Diogo. Conor Bradley will not have the big brother who helped him settle when he arrived from the academy, who played the Fifa video game with him and went with him to Cheltenham races. Alexis Mac Allister will be without the smile he loved, Darwin Núñez the companion. Luis Díaz won't have the guy who, in his hour of need, when his dad was in danger, scored a goal and held up a 'Díaz' shirt. For Tsimikas the pal who joined the club the same summer, back in 2020, won't be there. They had their own banter. 'You cross, I score,' Diogo would joke — and gloriously at Nottingham Forest that's exactly what happened moments after they both came on as substitutes. For Andrew Robertson, missing is maybe his best mate in the whole squad. Robbo was at Cheltenham with him too, and the darts, and at his wedding only two weeks ago. He was that type of friend, Robbo posted, who makes your life better and their goodbye is too soon and hurts so much. Someone who worked with Diogo Jota says he was 'one of the last truly selfless players' and Michael Caulfield, Brentford's psychologist, thinks it's always worth keeping in mind that 'even the older footballers are young'. And they are. Liverpool's squad, from fresh-faced Bradley to seasoned Mohamed Salah, are all young men dealing with a type of loss no one should face at a young stage of life. 'They'll want each other,' Caulfield says, 'they'll want the sanctum of the dressing room.' They will also not want to be regarded as a priority. To a man, in heartfelt social media messages such as Robertson's, they have reminded us the most important people at this time are Jota's family. But those players need looking after and both Liverpool's performance psychologist, Lee Richardson, and club chaplain, Bill Bygroves, are former footballers and relatable types with a light-touch approach. Every two or three weeks Richardson, 56, asks players to complete a questionnaire about their mental health as a low-key way of prompting reflection and getting them to 'check in with themselves'. He believes psychologists should 'not work on but work with' those who use them and seeks to create a 'safe circle' for players that wasn't there when he was a pro. In October, Liverpool made a 25-minute film for World Mental Health Day, which involved Richardson and a squad member speaking about the importance of airing feelings. The player who volunteered to take part was Jota and watching it is poignant now. Jota spoke about the importance of talking and the desire to be a strength for his kids but mostly he listened to what Richardson had to say. You get more than a glimpse of the intelligent, open, others-first person he was. The release that playing can provide cropped up in their conversation. 'Obviously everyone has things going on in their lives, business or family or whatever. I still feel like when I enter the pitch everything clears,' Jota said. Liverpool's first pre-season friendly is away to Preston North End on Sunday and no final decision will be taken until players are assessed but, as it stands, the fixture is expected to go ahead. The coming weeks are a road that can only be taken step by step and there is a unique pain to every loss. Yet there are examples of football clubs processing grief that might make people at Liverpool feel less alone. When Thursday's unimaginable news broke that Jota, 28, and his brother, André Silva, 26 — who is being mourned at Liverpool too — died after a car accident in Spain, many will have thought of Jimmy Davis, the former Manchester United and Watford forward, killed after a collision on the M40 aged 21 in 2003. By all accounts he was a similar character to Jota: a down-to-earth, warm, family-focused person whose positive company left others smiling. One who fitted Arne Slot's description of Jota as 'a friend not to two people but a friend to everyone'. Danny Webber came through the United ranks with Davis and was at Watford when Davis joined a month before his death. They were very close mates. Webber is not sure how he would have got through the bereavement without the compassion of Watford's manager, Ray Lewington, and director of football, Terry Byrne, and the support the players gave each other. 'A huge consideration for everyone was protecting Jimmy's family and remembering first and foremost the family have suffered the biggest loss,' Webber says. 'But what really stood out to me when Jim passed was even people who hadn't known him for a long period were affected because he built an affinity with people.' Davis died on the eve of a match with Coventry City and Webber says: 'I remember walking into the dressing room and the news was raw and the game had been cancelled. And I'm watching people, and I kept my sunglasses on because I was crying, and I'm thinking, 'Wow, it has deeply affected everybody.' Even senior pros who had only known him a few weeks were in tears but some people are infectious and Jota strikes me as that type of character. When you lose people like that, then it's about your community.' Webber, now 43, reflects, 'We were just young people,' and thinks of Lewington and Byrne continually checking in and keeping an eye on how he was coping. 'I remember being on the massage table and they'd spoken to Wayne, the masseur, and Wayne took it on himself to help in terms of relieving the stress. That's really important. I didn't identify where I was really struggling. I tried to do a lot of things to honour Jimmy, like wore a vest with his name on, but everything comes with weight because of the emotion attached to the person, you know? 'So I just think one of your biggest helps is the footballing community. You realise the magnitude of the person from the people who turn up and there was such an array of people at Jota's funeral [on Saturday] and Jimmy was the same — David Beckham flew back from Real Madrid, the whole Man United team turned up, the Swindon team [where Davis spent three months on loan].' With his own family in Manchester, Webber found the dressing room a nurturing and necessary refuge. 'I was down there by myself. So if I went home, I was in my own head, I was in my own thoughts. Sometimes I'd lose six, seven, eight hours and not realise where I'd gone. 'I only realise on reflection how important the dressing room was. Everybody came together. Everybody cried together, laughed together, smiled together, talked together. Talked about it. 'Sometimes it was as simple as, 'Are you OK?' And some days you'd want to talk, some days you wouldn't, and then there's also that ability, within a football dressing room, to shut off and go in and physically exhaust yourself and get rid of some of the angst you might be feeling.' Webber says Lewington and Byrne demonstrated great emotional intelligence. 'I was — how can I put it? — carrying ten rucksacks with weights on my back while playing football and once we got safe Ray just said to me, 'Go home and be with your family.' It was two, three weeks before the end of the season and exactly what I needed. Being back in Manchester helped and then I went to Vegas and blew off some steam.' Webber's heart goes out to Jota's wife, Rute Cardoso, their three children and his parents, and says one of the most important things is that football keeps checking in on the family. It can help by continuing to honour Diogo and André. 'There were a couple of things we did at Watford. As his initiation song Jimmy sang Gangsta's Paradise. It was his favourite and everybody loved his performance. 'All the years Watford had come out to Z-Cars, but we changed and walked out to Gangsta's Paradise. You'd have goosebumps because you knew what it meant but it was a blessing and a curse because it actually came with a heavy thought at the beginning of every football match. 'But then you would always rationalise it and be like, 'Yeah, flipping heck, it's Jimmy, he's here with us, it's the right, kind thing.' 'I think as a collective we found it heavy that season. We nearly got relegated but, in terms of remembering, what I do know is that Jimmy's family hold dear that they're still invited to things. 'The overwhelming thing, as I say, is how the football community was very warm in checking in on Jimmy's family and making sure they were looked after. To this day United still check in and I still speak to Jimmy's mum, sister, brother and best mate. I feel so deeply for his family, I can't even tell you. It's something that never leaves you.' Fifteen years ago Swansea City suffered the loss of Besian Idrizaj, a former Liverpool player, who died in his sleep of a suspected heart attack at home in Austria aged 22. The 2009-10 season had just ended. Garry Monk was club captain and a pillar of strength, as was the experienced forward Shefki Kuqi, who had a close bond with Idrizaj because of their Kosovan heritage. Kuqi flew to be with Idrizaj's family and help his father with the Kosovan press and Monk rang round players while liaising with the club. 'I remember having to communicate a lot with Shefki because he was incredibly upset and you go into organisation mode, speaking to the players, speaking to Kevin Johns, our club chaplain,' Monk says. 'Kev played a real big role. Privately, with the players, he led some prayers and then had a service with fans. The main thing was making sure Besian's family were respected.' Idrizaj was in players' minds all season and a constant motivation. Monk often spoke about him in team talks, reminding everyone how lucky they were and to seize what moments they had on the pitch. Swansea retired Idrizaj's shirt number of 40 and won their first game without him 4-0, scoring in the 40th minute after fans held up a '40' mosaic. After winning the Championship play-off final nine months later at Wembley, the team lifted the trophy wearing T-shirts in tribute to him. 'I made sure, along with Sue, the kit lady, we had T-shirts printed with his name and picture because we knew his family would be watching and wanted them to know, in that moment of success, we were thinking of something more important — we were thinking about Besian,' Monk said. Honouring a person, looking out for their family and just talking was Leyton Orient's route to dealing with the sudden death of their manager, Justin Edinburgh, shortly after he steered them back to the Football League in 2019. Martin Ling was, and remains, their director of football. Being the close season, he had to inform the players via a difficult, emotional group video call. Once they were in training, looking out for them was easier. 'We let them know there's places to go if you need to go through any type of grief [counselling] and one of the biggest things I remember is, I don't go on the training pitch every day but just felt it was really, really quiet around the place. I went out and said, 'Justin is gone but if he was here today, what would he expect of you?' and you could hear the level of conversation start to go up a bit,' Ling says. 'You need to help people get things off their chest. You're never going to bring it straight back to normal so it's just about making it as normal as you can. When the lads are out playing football and the ball's running around, that's probably the time they're thinking about it least.' There is no manual for grief; everyone has to make their own way, Ling reflects. He was helped enormously by the League Managers Association and tried to use previous experience of dealing with personal mental health issues to help players. He's proud to work out of an office in what is now the Justin Edinburgh Stand at Brisbane Road and, as Orient continue on an upward trajectory, continually reminds people 'this all started with Justin'. Thinking of Liverpool's players, he says: 'I just think they need support. They need people to allow them to grieve, they need time to understand. 'I can't dress it up or say it any other way — time does heal. It allows you to understand and cope. In the way Justin has been with us since he passed six years ago, I think they will carry Jota. Liverpool will always carry Jota.' A colleague (from outside the sports section) haughtily speculated football people wouldn't know what to do faced with tragedy like Jota. I think it's the very opposite. Football is a world where facing and feeling and sharing emotion is unavoidable. In dressing rooms people are, to use two words that recurred in Liverpool players' posts about Jota, companions and brothers. No office is like that. 'Football is the harshest environment in life. But it's also the kindest place to be in life. In moments like these you find football at its most giving. Deep down players share a bond — they all come from remarkable backgrounds, have been through remarkable challenges to get here and understand how precious it all is,' Caulfield says. 'And this is Liverpool. Look how Sir Kenny Dalglish handled Hillsborough. He had zero training but it was the greatest act of compassion I've ever seen.' You won't find a business leader capable of the kind of message Slot posted about Jota, or speaking with the raw power the manager Chris Wilder did after the passing of the former Sheffield United defender George Baldock in October. Wilder wanted to honour Baldock as a 'culture carrier' and empathise with what Baldock's former team-mates were going through. Baldock was described by Wilder as a culture carrier and emblematic of what he wants the club to look like MATT WEST/SHUTTERSTOCK 'Players see more of each other than possibly their families because they're in at eight o'clock, leave at four o'clock and do that five days a week and travel together and have match day. George represented me, and what I wanted our club to look like. His journey was amazing, from MK Dons to the Premier League and becoming an international player, and he was the lad who cared about the whole group and the wider club,' Wilder says. That seems to have been Jota too. At his funeral in Gondomar his best friend, the Portugal midfielder Ruben Neves, helped carry his coffin and players from Wolves, Manchester City and Manchester United attended. Virgil van Dijk carried flowers in the shape of a red shirt bearing Jota's number, 20, Robertson carried one bearing Silva's number, 30, and behind them, in line, walked Liverpool staff and present and former players. Walk on. That's all the bereaved can do.
Yahoo
30-06-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
Inside Liverpool pre-season as Mohamed Salah talks expected and Florian Wirtz plan takes shape
The Liverpool squad are enjoying their final week off before reporting for pre-season duty at the AXA Training Centre. Arne Slot and his backroom staff will welcome back their players on Monday, July 7 to begin the preparations for next season, as they look to retain the Premier League title they cantered to last time out, winning it with four games to spare and eventually finishing 10 points ahead of Arsenal. Advertisement With no major international tournaments this summer, the Reds will have a virtually full contingent available to them from day one next month. Harvey Elliott and Tyler Morton will be granted additional holiday time following their exertions for England's Under-21 squad in their successful European Championship defence in Slovakia. But that Slot and his staff have a full complement to work with for the entirety of the summer schedule will be viewed as a major boost. READ MORE: Harvey Elliott transfer decision imminent as Liverpool ready for offers READ MORE: Three players who could leave Liverpool this week as medical scheduled Advertisement Here, the ECHO takes a closer look at what might await the players at the £50m Kirkby base and who will be out to impress more than most. A new era at Liverpool last summer brought with it a change in direction for pre-season training and the dreaded lactate test under former boss Jurgen Klopp was swapped last time out for a similarly punishing Six-Minute Race Test (6MRT). The endurance exam, as the name indicates, lasts for six minutes around a 400m race track with the exercise designed for those undertaking it to go as fast as possible to cover somewhere between 1.5 and 2km. Jarell Quansah, Conor Bradley and Sepp van den Berg all took part in the run last year, which was overseen by fitness coach Dr Conall Murtagh and head of performance Ruben Peeters alongside Slot. Advertisement Curtis Jones and Kostas Tsimikas joined later in the day for their own workout but it was Mohamed Salah who finished top of the pile later that week, impressively proving his endurance and sowing the seeds for a famous campaign that followed. 'It's important to show your mentality," Salah and Wataru Endo were told by Dr Murtagh last year. "Show the lads how it's done as leaders in the group.' It was an instruction Salah listened to as he tore away from the pack to set the pace at the AXA Centre and Slot was keen to personally relay a similar message a few days later, with the Egyptian revealing his head coach pulled him aside to deliver an honest appraisal of what was expected from him for the campaign ahead. 'In pre season, Arne came to see me and asked me to be an example for the other players," Salah told L'Equipe last month. "I told him not to worry because I'm always at my best - not to set an example, but because that's who I am. He told me what he expected of me in the game, with a lot of responsibilities in running, which I liked.' Advertisement Speaking at the beginning of May, Salah told NBC: 'In pre-season I remember he got a few clips of me in the warm-up – it's the warm-up! I was doing like this (keepie-ups) and he was like: 'What is that? Look at that, you have young players behind you and all of them follow'. He is very honest and speaks to you right away. I think that makes a huge, huge difference.' It's not just the running drills that have changed under Slot, however. The goalkeeper department, which is now overseen by Fabian Otte, has undergone something of a makeover this summer with the signings of Giorgi Mamardashvili, Armin Pecsi and Freddie Woodman and a new way of working that was introduced for the glovesmen of the AXA Training Centre last summer might be set to continue. Last year the club's goalkeepers used special glasses designed to limit their field of vision as they went through some routine training drills as a way of improving reactions and confidence in possession. With the demands on goalkeepers' ball-playing ability becoming increasingly important and prevalent in the modern game, the strategy sees the players put on the eyewear and maintain possession under pressure from coaches and large inflatable mannequins used to represent the opposition. Advertisement Liverpool's commercial agreement with Peloton allows the club to benefit from the use of the bespoke exercise bikes inside the gym and the players will be expected to get on the machines and power through in their sessions before moving outdoors for more running and ball work. The Reds face Preston North End six days into the pre-season schedule at Deepdale before flying out to Hong Kong, where they will meet AC Milan at Kai Tak Sports Park on July 26. From there, the Reds jet to Japan where they are entertained at Nissan Stadium by Yokohama F Marinos on July 30. Back-to-back friendlies with Athletic Club will be held at Anfield on August 4 before the Community Shield is held on Sunday August 10 against FA Cup holders Crystal Palace at Wembley. With there being a free week between the Preston friendly and the flight out to the Far East, Liverpool may still look to arrange a behind-closed doors friendly as Slot looks to fine tune his players for their big kick-off at home to Bournemouth on Friday August 15. Advertisement New signings Florian Wirtz, Jeremie Frimpong, Milos Kerkez and goalkeeper Mamardashvili will all naturally want to start off on the right foot and the big-spending summer has already ensured it will be an intriguing schedule for supporters searching for signs that the record-breaking window will prove to be success. Most eyes will be on £116m Wirtz, who arrives from Bayer Leverkusen as one of the most coveted players in Europe prior to his move to Anfield. Both Bayern Munich and Manchester City had been keen, while Real Madrid, now coached by Wirtz's former coach Xabi Alonso, failed in a late attempt to launch their own charm offensive. With Trent Alexander-Alexander-Arnold now at Real Madrid, much of the creative onus will fall on Wirtz in an attacking midfield role and a strong showing in pre-season is a must. The same applies to £29m Frimpong, whose versatility and pace on the right side could open new dimensions for Slot's champions. As for Salah, the uber-professional Egyptian will once more be keen to enjoy a full and uninterrupted summer. The decision to shun the Olympic Games with the Pharaohs in favour of being with the Reds on their tour of the United States was an inspired call in 2024. As a result, Salah flew out of the traps for Slot's Liverpool and his 29 goals went a long way towards securing the Premier League title.
