Andy Robertson has explained what he meant when he said Liverpool’s players “didn’t care about football” after Diogo Jota died. Speaking on The Overlap’s Stick to Football, the former Liverpool defender described a dressing room grieving for a friend while being expected to return to work. Football had not stopped, but it felt far less important to the people who had played alongside him.

Jota and his brother André Silva died in a road accident in Spain on 3 July 2025. Robertson had attended Jota’s wedding shortly before the crash. Looking back, he said the contrast between seeing his teammate celebrate with his family and then seeing that family in mourning was among the hardest parts of the experience.

A squad trying to play through grief

Robertson said the new players arriving at Liverpool joined a club that was already heartbroken. He felt sympathy for them as they tried to settle into a team whose established players were struggling to focus on football. In the interview, as reported by The Independent, he said the squad had lost some of its competitive edge and sometimes found itself asking what the game meant beside what Jota’s wife and children were going through.

His words were an account of grief, not an accusation that Liverpool’s players had stopped trying. Robertson said they still had to play and did their best, but Jota was more than a footballer to them. Liverpool finished fifth in the Premier League in 2025–26, a difficult title defence. Robertson linked some of that struggle to the emotional weight carried by the squad; his comments do not establish grief as the sole reason for its results.

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Jota remains part of Anfield

Robertson has since left Liverpool for Tottenham, but his account gives a personal view of a loss the club continues to mark publicly. In July 2026, Liverpool unveiled a permanent memorial to Jota and André Silva outside Anfield. Called Forever 20, it honours both brothers and gives supporters a place to remember them. Robertson’s interview describes the same loss from inside the dressing room, where a teammate’s absence was felt long after the matches resumed.

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