Why can't we just let Liverpool grieve?

0:02Mark:This is a Global Player original podcast.

0:05Gary Bloom:When Andy Robertson led Scotland to their first World Cup in 28 years in that incredible game last week, his mind post-match immediately went to one person.

0:16Mark:Today I've been in bits. I couldn't get my mate Diogo Jock out of my head today. We spoke so much together about the World Cup. when he missed out on guitar because of injury I missed out Scotland never went and we all discussed what it would be like going to this World Cup and I know he'll be somewhere smiling over me tonight I just couldn't get him out of my head the whole day so I was in a bit of trouble in my room earlier but like I said I think I hit it well off the boys and I'm just so glad it's ended up this week

0:51Gabby:After Diogo Jota's tragic death in a car accident last July, has football got better at talking about grief? What's the psychology behind grieving in a high-performance sporting environment? How do players express what they're going through without it coming across as an excuse?

1:11Gary Bloom:Welcome to The Sports Agents.

1:21Mark:the sports agents with gabby logan and mark chapman

1:26Gary Bloom:hello mark hi gabby a tough one on the sports agents today and we're we're fully aware when you listen to the conversation that that we had with stephen warnock and gary bloom that it is such a sensitive area and grief is a is such a personal thing and we're trying to look at this in the context of sport which doesn't very often deal with situations quite as unbelievably tragic as this you know and Liverpool of all clubs has had to deal with with tragedy but this is this is something incredibly unusual isn't it for for a teammate to lose their life in the prime of their sporting life.

2:07Gabby:I mean I think as we all discover when we talk to Gary and Stephen grief affects people on so many different levels both as an individual and as a as a collective and then very public grief adds even more layers to the whole subject so that's on the way.

2:28Gary Bloom:Chappers on a completely different sporting note I know you were very excited about the Ashes and you closed Match of the Day on Saturday night, that your evening was going to be slightly different to the one I'm sure. And my Sunday night journey home was also very different to the one that I had envisaged, where I was looking forward to listening to Test Match Special all the way home. Instead, I listened to Tony Livesey.

2:54Gabby:I was on the radio on Saturday afternoon, so the test had already, you know, finished. it was as depressing as we all know now and it it brought me back to a quote because i just finished watching season five of flow horses and gary oldman's character and he came up with a line in that season five and this reminded me immediately of when i was when i was watching this first step he says in it it's not the hope that kills you it's knowing it's the hope that kills you that kills you and that's kind of now looking back at all of our pre-ashes coverage to where we got it you're always there going yeah this could be it and then thinking oh no it's the hope it's the hope that kills you but i'm knowing that the hope that kills you is what killed it and that's kind of how it felt really it was just look what an astonishing an astonishing test match and the one positive i suppose is that england are are strong mentally they are good at bouncing back you know and they won't let this criticism hit them that they are very steadfast in their in their belief but my god what a no i mean i should know over the years exactly how first

4:09Gary Bloom:tests go but even that was something else i just i feel so sorry for those people who've flown all that way for the third day and got absolutely nothing at 9 000 england fans made their way for this first test so it's a very expensive if you can only do the first test yes yeah that is such it's a lovely place to go there's lots to do in western australia but you mainly went for cricket

4:34Gabby:yeah yeah and you you've got two days and then that's that you would hope that most people are staying for more than just that that one test but you know people have saved and saved and saved and saved and that was what they got which is incredibly entertaining but that that collapse after lunch. You know, they had a 100-run lead. They still had nine wickets. It was there for the taking. And the other thing with it, Gabby, as well, is it was an Australian team that had been widely criticized by their own media after the first day, and Usman Khawaja off playing golf before the test and back spasms and the reshuffle of the batty liner.

5:10Gabby:So they were on the ropes a bit, and everything that's happened has kind of taken all the air out of our balloon, really, and inflated theirs a little bit. And it's difficult at the moment to shake that feeling that they were there for the taking a little bit.

5:25Gary Bloom:England had a clean sweep in the Autumn Internationals, England Rugby Union, men's side. Six Nations favourites, you'd think now, because they did look the most dominant of the Six Nations sides throughout this autumn series. Kind of blooding or getting players, younger players, a lot more game time as well. There seems to be in this group of players something I've not seen from the outside for a long time. And there's a real cohesiveness, a real sense of kind of togetherness in this group, which is really interesting when you consider the kind of attitudes towards Borthwick and his leadership a year ago even.

5:59So I feel like there's enough character in that group now of players that it doesn't matter what the character of the head coach is.

6:08Gary Bloom:They can imprint their own personality on this side.

6:11Gabby:we're not going to talk about the f1 now are we because mclaren uh ceo zach brown will join us on thursday but i mean what what a uh astonishing well not even an astonishing finish an astonishing disqualification an astonishing hour after the finish with the disqualification of both the mclarens which makes the title race even tighter funny that uh make sure you hit subscribe and

6:35Gary Bloom:follow so you never miss an episode and you can leave us a review as well if you like you can get in touch the sports agents at global.com on email or you can message us on social media or via the

6:44Gabby:link in the episode description so after the break we'll be discussing grief after the death of diogo jota in the summer that's with former liverpool defender stephen warner and sports psychotherapist at cognacity gary bloom the sports agents

7:03Mark:the sports agents with gabby logan and mark chapman

7:09Gabby:So on the Sports Agents now, we are going to discuss the subject of grief and in relation to the loss of Diogo Jota and how it may and how it is affecting Liverpool. Former Liverpool defender Stephen Warnock and sports psychotherapist Gary Bloom are with us. Before we bring them in, we're just going to hear from Jurgen Klopp.

7:32Mark:Nobody at Liverpool will ever use it as an excuse, but it is the situation. You walk every day in this room where he was omnipresent and dealing with that on a personal level, not easy. As a club, take all the emotional stuff out and think, how do we replace him? And you have to think about that. Wow, that's difficult.

7:57Gabby:Impossible, I would say.

7:59Gary Bloom:So that's Jurgen Klopp speaking to Stephen Bartlett on the diary of a CEO. We should just frame this discussion we're about to have that Jota's death is much bigger than football. And it is, of course, much worse for his family. But I think it is a difficult thing to talk about. Grief is difficult anyway to talk about. And particularly when you're aligning it to performance in sport, because the two seem, it seems so trivial, actually. and that I guess is where we come to those relationships and the family that is Liverpool Football Club and what they're going through right now and it's it's thrown up a lot of questions I think for people in terms of how much this season you can even critique Liverpool because of what's going on in the background but Gary if I could just start with you that clip there when I first heard it really impacted me because I think we don't know do we what goes on behind closed doors.

8:55Gary Bloom:We don't know how somebody is the glue almost to a place. And I think Jota as a character, perhaps people outside of Liverpool Football Club maybe didn't have any idea what his relationship was like with other people. But when Jurgen Klopp talks about him, you get a real sense of somebody who was able to be as close with the older, more established players, the younger players, the staff around the club, somebody who was so loved and so well regarded throughout the whole club.

9:26Stephen Warnock:It's a very, very sensitive issue. And I think we have to recognise the sensitivities of a lot of people who are grieving. This is not just individual grief for the individual players who knew Diogo. We're looking at something called collective grief. When the fans and the players and the support staff of Liverpool Football Club and everybody else involved with this tragedy, it becomes very different. And one of the things I'd like to get across here from the get-go is collective grief is harder and I don't think we've reached peak grief yet. I think it's going to get worse before it gets better.

10:03Stephen Warnock:I'm not a predictor of football scores, but I think this will reach its peak mid-January and maybe you'll get the first shoots of recovery, maybe slightly later, February, March time.

10:18Gabby:I'm sort of glad you began with that, Gary, because I would imagine all of us have gone through grief at different stages. And if I was to talk about my own grief, I'd do that in the full knowledge that I am controlling exactly when I talk about it and what I want to talk about. And therefore, whilst grief can be overwhelming and come over you like a wave and you have to allow it to do that, and that takes you by surprise, in the main, I can control when the grief hits me, when I choose to grieve, when I want to talk about it, when I don't want to talk about it. And the one thing that has struck me since the terrible events of the summer, is that it's very difficult for the individuals at Liverpool Football Club to control their grief because it is so public and collective and out of their control.

11:17Stephen Warnock:Well, in some respects, Mark, I mean, I'd agree with everything you're saying. There's a but coming. And the but is that when you decide to deal with your own grief, and all of us here have lost anybody, you're not reminded of it by 20 ,000 fans belting out his name. You're not there with the tributes behind the main standard Anfield. You're constantly reminded of it. You know, you can't shut this off. Now, there might be sort of naysayers who are listening to this podcast who'd say, yeah, but we're just having a downturn in form and Arsenal have come up stronger this season. There's two big clues here.

11:55Stephen Warnock:One, if you look at the results and you examine the results, there is there's data there which suggests there is an issue on the pitch and the other thing i'd say is andy robertson liverpool and scotland left back scotland had just qualified for the the world cup for the first time since 98 he walks he's enough to pitch yet somebody thrusts a microphone under his nose and the first thing he talks about not i can't wait to go to the states this summer. Not anything else about his teammates in Scotland. He talks immediately about the effect of Diogo Jota on his life and the fact to quote Andy, I was in bits in my dressing room this afternoon.

12:38Stephen Warnock:I was having a bad time. Very clearly, Robertson saying, this still affects me deeply. So there's no, to me, there's no getting away. This is a psychological issue.

12:48Gary Bloom:What was interesting, when you say thrust a microphone, he was doing his normal post-match interview. There was nothing intrusive about that interview because the question wasn't asked. He volunteered that information. He has decided to tell us how his day was. And that was consumed with thoughts of his teammate. And we don't know, do we, Stephen, how any of those players, you know, approach every, I talk about the Liverpool players now, approach any match day, how many of them are having similar experiences, but, you know, they don't want to talk about it or they, you know, they don't see it as being, you know, an appropriate time.

13:23Gary Bloom:So Andy has given us a little insight, incredible insight into his psychology, but we can't possibly know what those players are going through on a daily basis.

13:32Mark:No, I think one of the things that we often forget is what goes on within a changing room, the camaraderie within a changing room. And when you're sat in a home dressing room and you're looking up and there's Diogo Jota's empty space within a changing room before a game, you're going to often think back to the memories that you had for that player. And I think often when we think about grief and when we've gone through grief, it's draining. It physically drains you. So going into a game, I think me and Chappers have spoke about this, the song on 20 minutes. And often when we think of grief and we hear a song and it reminds us of someone, if we're in a place where we're comfortable with it, we'll listen to that song and we'll enjoy that song and we'll think about the memories.

14:11Mark:If we're in a place where we don't want to, we've got the option to turn it off. Liverpool fans are singing the song on 20 minutes. Liverpool players can't suddenly just turn around and say, hang about, I'm not ready for that at the moment. Let's turn it off. That's a difficult process for the players to go through. And I think the other side of it is that players will all grieve in different stages at different times. There'll be some players, you think of Frank Lampard when he lost his mum and he played the next day, scored a goal and was arguably Chelsea's best player for the rest of the season.

14:40Mark:It's very interesting there to hear Gary's thoughts on a collective grief. I'd never even thought of it in that way. You just think of players individually, but collectively, that must be completely different to what they're going through. There's a paradox here, because on one hand,

14:58Stephen Warnock:everybody wants to remember Diogo and the joy he brought to many, many fans. Nobody would want to interfere with that. But is that good for the football team's form? Now, nobody's going to say, just get rid of the 20-minute song. Let's get rid of the tributes behind the mainstamp. Who would want to do that? And certainly the finger would be pointed at them and say, that's incredibly insensitive. I'm not sure all of that actually helps the players on the pitch.

15:26Gabby:The other thing as well is there are layers within the collective as well, aren't there, Stephen? Because some were at the club with him, some weren't at the club with him in this dressing room and on the backroom staff as well, I think. so there's a different challenge I suppose for this squad because there will be some people coming into a grieving dress room who never knew Diogo Jota yeah I think it was interesting at the the start when we were talking about his ability to connect with so many players with different

16:01Mark:age groups and things like that and and I know a lot of the staff at Liverpool and I spoke to them and what they say is is that he was exactly what everyone is talking about he was the person who was infectious. He lifted the mood when things were down. He was always walking around with a smile on his face. So when you lose someone like that in a changing room, I'm guessing it's very difficult for someone to, and I don't want to use the word, almost replace him because you'll never replace it, but you do need someone else like that in a changing room. But when you lose someone of that importance, it must be so difficult.

16:35Mark:And I look at the new players walking into the changing room and they're not walking into a happy changing room. They're walking into a changing room that's grieving. How do they deal with that? How do the new players approach the players that have been at the club? How do they talk about Diogo Jota? Do they talk about him? Do they want to talk about him? I think that's a very difficult situation. The original players with the new players walking into a changing room, they're in a period where they're thinking there's more important things in life than new players walking into a changing room, we're all grieving, the families are grieving, a horrible situation.