Smiles of Diogo Jota, tears of Darwin Nunez, how do athletes cope with tragic losses of lives?

Indian Express

07-07-2025

The smile of Diogo Jota will not leave the heart of Darwin Nunez. Both were strike partners, sometimes vying for the same spot, thick friends. Andy Robertson would miss the 'bloke he loved' and the one he confided in hours of self-doubts. 'We'd watch the darts together, enjoy the horse racing,' he penned a touching tribute. Luis Diaz remembers the evening Jota, after scoring a goal, held out Diaz's jersey and waved to the crowd. The Colombian's father was kidnapped. 'There are gestures that one never forgets, and Diogo had one with me that will accompany me all my life,' Diaz wrote on Instagram.
The reality of his loss would sink in only when they assemble for the pre-season on Tuesday. They would miss not just the selfless and gifted player that he was, but the empathetic and friendly person he was. They could feel him watching from the corner of the room, bantering around, or listening patiently to the woes of a teammate, or chipping in with a piece of advice to a young colleague. Tears would be shed, bottles would be kicked and the walls would be banged. Losing a colleague, a sweet one at that, would haunt them not for a match, a month, or a season. But until they live. They could channel the inner pain and angst to something substantial. A trophy, a clutch of them perhaps. 'For the team and the club, we'll try to cope with this together…however long that takes,' Robertson would say.
But the best therapy to overcome the grief is returning to the ground, to do what they love the most. To play football. Last year, Jota himself had spoken about the game as a refuge from the woes of life during a 30-minute documentary for World Mental Health Day. 'Obviously everyone has things going on in their lives, business or family or whatever. I still feel like when I enter the pitch everything clears,' he would say.
In the past too players who have endured loss of colleagues have talked about returning to training as the best way to cope with loss. Eight Manchester United teammates of Harry Gregg died in the tragic plane crash on the Munich runway. For days, he locked himself in the room, cut off from even his family. But he realised that soon he would be killing himself.
So one day, he just took his boots and goalkeeping gloves and drove to the training ground in White City Stadium in Manchester. 'If I had to sit in my home I would have gone mad. Sitting there with the thoughts of all that had happened, all those terrible things I had seen, I just knew that I had to get out. That was the best thing that happened to me and I think the other survivors; to get down to White City and kick the living shit out of each other on the training field once more,' he later told The Guardian..
'To get into the White City actually saved me. To argue, to fight, to train on the pitch and to be involved once more in training. It stopped me from going insane over what had happened to us all out there on the Munich runway,' he added.
One of the fellow survivors was the late Bobby Charlton, who battled post-traumatic stress disorder for the rest of his life. His family still funds research into PTSD under the Sir Bobby Charlton Centres for Support and Rehabilitation programme. He claims he kept seeing ghosts of his departed friends and would hear their sound. 'For a little while, you see, football, all of life, had seemed to lose meaning. You think to yourself 'why should it be me?' he said before on his 80th birthday.
For months Andres Iniesta couldn't reconcile with the death of his friend and Espanyol footballer Daniel Jarque, who died of heart attack during a preseason trip to Italy. 'Not depression exactly, not illness either, not really, but an unease,' he wrote in his autobiography, The Artist. He flunked training sessions, skipped team talks and even though he never mulled retiring. He eventually sought medical help. 'When you need help, you have to look for it: at times it's necessary. People are specialists; that's what they're there for. You have to use them,' he said.
Memories of Jarque rushed back the night before the World Cup final. He woke up at 4 am and slipped out for a sprint along the empty but dangerous streets of Johannesburg. The next evening, when he scored the goal that won his country the World Cup, he lifted his shirt to show a message on his under-shirt, written in blue marker by Hugo the kit man:'Dani Jarque siempre con nosotros' ('Dani Jarque, always with us')
But intermittently, Jarque's memories would pop up. Perhaps, they never really get over the pain, because they are forever connected with the men with whom you play. It's a unique bond, because their experience has been collective, they spend more time together with teammates than families.
Often the best coping mechanism is to return to the dressing room and training ground. To purge sorrow with sorrow. The former Australian cricket captain Michael Clarke once said he dealt with the loss of Phil Hughes, his teammate and friend who fell to a bouncer, by clinging to the happy times they had together. 'I try to on a daily basis think about the times we celebrated, we partied, we sat on the couch, we went for coffee or had breakfast,' Clarke once said. Former West Indies cricketer Chris Gayle used to visit the grave of his friend Runako Morton, who died in a car crash in 2012, in Nevis and share a glass of whiskey, which was Runako's favourite drink.
Different coping mechanisms, but Jota's teammates would carry his memories for as long as they live. The smile, the kind words, the goodwill gesture. Far more precious than the goals he scored or the assists he made.