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Photo by FRANCK FIFE/AFP via Getty Images
With France facing Israel in the Nations League on Wedneday, Liverpool centre half Konaté was tasked with talking about far more than just football.
More than a year after Hamas’ October 7th terrorist attack on Israel left more than 1,200 dead. More than a year into Israel’s offensive in Gaza that has killed upwards of 40,000 Palestinians including 17,000 children while survivors struggle with disease and famine.
With Israeli forces having now entered Lebanon demanding either regime change or face the consequences of a full scale invasion while Iran and Israel trade blows—both verbal and involving explosive violence—and the Middle East risks descent into wider scale war.
Against that backdrop, on Thursday night Israel host France in a Nations League match played in Budapest. And Liverpool and France centre half Ibrahima Konaté was tasked with talking to the press about it. Which meant having to talk about more than just football.
“We’re not going to say it’s a match like any other,” Konaté said. “In a way it is because we’re going to play football, but what’s happening in the world doesn’t leave us indifferent. What we see on social networks is abominable. I don’t have words to describe the horror.
“Afterwards, I tell myself that what’s happening is very serious, but I worry about young people. We hear adults crying about what’s happening in the world, but imagine children opening their phones. At eight or ten years old, you see people being decapitated.
“I worry about these generations. Fighting terrorism is one thing, but the civilians who are being killed en masse, that hurts me. The civilians who have nothing to do with it and who are being killed en masse. We must not ignore everything that is happening.”
Given both the horror of the ongoing violence in the region and difficulty of answering questions about it in a way that won’t open him up to criticism—either fair or otherwise—Konaté’s response seems measured, reasonable, and also appropriately sobering.
It’s hard to imagine, of course, that it will make any kind of a difference to a conflict that in this iteration has now stretched on for more than a year, with the ever growing death toll and incalculable human suffering seemingly the only tangible accomplishments.
“We simply want peace in the world,” Konaté added. “I speak on behalf of everyone here. If we can help through our behaviour, our words, our kindness—beyond religion and conflicts, we are human. If only we could remember that. Life is short, we must try to be happy.”
