Having just completed the biggest achievement of his international career, Andy Robertson’s emotional post-match response revealed so much…
THE VOICE breaks.
“I couldn’t get my mate Diogo Jota out of my head today.”
You break for Andy Robertson and his willingness to expose you to a snippet of his grief. He talks about “hiding it well from the boys,” and there’s so much of that you want to dig into.
Mostly, I just want to tell him that all of this can wait. To go and do what he needs.
We’ve seen that football waits for nobody, though. And in the briefest of insights from Robertson’s post-match interview following Scotland’s 4-2 win over Denmark on Tuesday night, from those fluctuating and overwhelming emotions meshed with the need to perform and ‘be professional’, we maybe got to see what a major issue this has been for Liverpool this season.
It’s fine to think Liverpool are pretty rubbish right now, despite them assembling one of the most talent-rich squads in modern football history. It’s fine to blame this on Arne Slot if you so desire. Feel free to take aim at refereeing decisions and the fixture computer with my blessing.
Jota’s passing remains something that – in the first instance – is incredibly hard to talk or write about. As I type, I’m mindful of tone and words. The impact of them and the fragility of the topic.
But Robertson reminded us that this was a human being now lost, rather than some entity of footballing superpower that was taken away.
Of course, he was a fantastic footballer with tenacity and clinical instincts. His skills could have helped any team at the top of the European pyramid. But we don’t really talk about that, either. What we have is tentative speculation about the impact of his passing, and his song on 20 minutes of every game.
When you’re not winning, everything is questioned. The appropriateness of the chant and its potential detrimental impact on results has been pondered. The ley lines of context and performance become meshed.
I still can’t sing the song. For whatever reason I find it too hard. But the last thing I want is for it to be viewed as anything other than a people’s showing of support and outpouring over such a tragic event.
All of this highlights the perplexity present here. Liverpool Football Club exists to both play and win football matches. It was, rightly or wrongly, the only solution in 1989 when they went on to win the FA Cup.
The overwhelming grief and loss felt by Hillsborough meant that nothing would compensate for the number of lives lost that day. For some, this event was enough to turn their back on football forever, such was the trauma they’d suffered.
But footballers only know football, and the cogs simply had to continue turning.
That has been the case this season. There’s been a disjointed look to the Liverpool squad which lies with some of Slot’s selection choices. Certain players like Dominik Szoboszlai look fit, hungry and able to play three games a week. Others look lethargic and heavy (all the feelings grief can personify).
Injuries have increased, further alluding to this lack of rhythm. When Jota died, one of the first things Slot said publicly was that players could train or not, play or not, depending on how they felt.
We don’t know how many of them took him up on that offer and therefore haven’t been able to attain peak levels. We can only imagine how hard entering this environment has been for new players that joined this summer.
Rightly, the football world has been kept in the dark. On Tuesday, Liverpool’s greatest left-back of the modern era, a man embodying humility and honesty, let us in ever-so-slightly to what he’s going through. The need to perform for club and country versus an insurmountable sense of loss.
Ultimately, what Robertson exposed so beautifully to the world is that he misses his mate.
Something we can all surely empathise with.
