Andy Robertson Reflects on Liverpool's Grief After Jota's Tragic Death

Andy Robertson has laid bare the depth of Liverpool’s anguish last season, admitting the squad “didn’t care about football” in the months after the death of close friend and team‑mate Diogo Jota.

The Scotland captain, now at Tottenham, spoke candidly on the Stick to Football podcast about the emotional toll inside the dressing room following Jota’s death in a road accident last July, which also claimed the life of his brother, Andre Silva.

“You've just lost one of your best mates in the changing room,” Robertson said. The words land heavily. This wasn’t a distant tragedy. It tore through the heart of the squad.

Liverpool staggered through a campaign in which they began as champions but never truly looked like themselves. The grief, Robertson explained, stripped away the edge that had defined them.

“All footballers, we have that edge don’t we? And I think last season we lost the edge, when I look back on it now,” he said. “We lost that determination a little bit because there were times where we were going like, well what’s the point?

“Look at what Jota’s family are going through, look at his kids. We were grieving. He was a team-mate, he was a friend. It was incredibly difficult.”

One detail cut through more than most. Robertson had been at Jota’s wedding just days before the accident.

“The week before he died I was at his wedding. That’s one of the most difficult things you’ll ever go through,” he recalled. “Seeing him on the happiest day of his life and then the next week you’re seeing his family torn apart.”

The emotional weight did not just sit with the established core of the squad. It shaped the entire environment new arrivals walked into. Players such as Alexander Isak and Florian Wirtz, signed for big money that summer, stepped into a club paralysed by shock.

“What we went through, it was horrendous,” Robertson said. “The new signings, they’re coming into a club that is heartbroken and that’s where I felt sorry for those guys.

“They’d signed for big money and it took them months to settle in because we didn’t care about football. That was the truth of it.”

On the pitch, the numbers told their own story. Liverpool, who had started the season as champions, lost nine of 12 games between September and November, their form collapsing as the campaign drifted away. They finished fifth, well below expectations, and head coach Arne Slot was sacked.

For Robertson, the loss of Jota cut across club and country. Speaking last November, just after he had captained Scotland to the World Cup, he reflected on how both of them had dreamed of reaching the tournament after missing out in 2022.

That dream will now belong to Robertson alone. The season that followed Jota’s death will be remembered at Liverpool not just for dropped points and a fallen title defence, but for a team trying to play football while living with a hole no tactics board could ever fix.