‘I became the player I am today thanks to each one of them’ – Liverpool’s Ibrahima Konaté pays tribute to his five older brothers | OneFootball

Liverpool centre-back Ibrahima Konaté (26) has opened up at length to Ouest-France on the importance of a player’s entourage in a successful football career. The 26-year-old France international, who pulled out of Didier Deschamps’ squad with a minor thigh injury, believes that a player’s entourage accounts for 60% of one’s career, and with five older brothers to look up to – Diawoye, Sirima, Mamby, Sikou and Moriba – Ibrahima Konaté has no shortage of family support.

“I became the player I am today thanks to each one of them“, Konaté says. “From my first steps at Paris Université Club twenty years ago to Liverpool, they have always been a fundamental help.” The centre-back adds that the respect he shows to his older brothers helps him be humble and down-to-earth. Konaté reveals that, once he signed his first professional contract with Ralf Rangnick’s RB Leipzig, he started to make a very decent living from football, but he was too afraid to show it. “I didn’t spend anything at all on hedonistic and personal pleasures. No new car, no clothes, no shoes. Nothing. I was too afraid they’d tell me I’d changed.“

Eventually, one of the Konaté brothers encouraged Ibrahima to treat himself. For the soon-to-be Liverpool centre-back, it acted as a trigger. “I’m not going to lie to you: I overdid it a bit, especially with clothes.“

Konaté also revealed how his five older brothers help him focus on football by acting like “lightning rods“. “You have no idea how much footballers need them. Many people, more or less well-intentioned, roam around us. 95 % of them come because I’m Konaté, the football player, and not Ibrahima, the person. They want to take advantage of my fame, but they don’t really care about me (…) As soon as someone wants to approach me, they filter them out.“

GFFN | Bastien Cheval