Lionel Messi Details "Difficult, Complicated Days" Ahead of World Cup 2026

“Someone kept calling me from back home. I was annoyed. I didn’t understand why they kept calling me,” he added. “I picked up, and they didn’t even soften it. You know how it is back home. No emotions. Just……..‘Your sister is gone.’”

Recalling he was told “‘Somebody put something in her drink at a party, and she never woke up,’” Diomande shared he “never got answers” as to how the tragedy unfolded. 

“I don’t know if I want to know why,” he explained. “Maybe it was jealousy. Maybe it’s just something that happens in our country. Maybe I could have protected you. I don’t know.”

Though the RB Leipzig winger has been able to adjust to life without his sister through trusting “God’s plan,” he shared that the loss has fundamentally changed him. 

“Now, I don’t feel anything,” he wrote. “It’s like I’m not even human. Since you died, I’m just blank.”

But for Diomande, the heartache only aids in keeping his head in the game. 

“All I can do is use the pain to work harder,” he wrote, “and to do everything we dreamed about.”

“I don’t even look at it like a game. I look at it like a stage,” he said. “This is my chance to show the whole world what you saw in me. Every time I score, I’ll make sure everybody knows your name. I’ll make sure they don’t forget you.”

And though Roxane won’t be able to sit in the stands to watch her brother compete for their country’s national team—which plays its final stage game against Curaçao on June 25— that’s only fuel for Diomande to keep fighting until the finish.

“I’m going to do what you predicted, I swear,” he wrote. “Before I even had real boots, you were telling everybody, ‘My brother is going to be the greatest in the world.’”

He continued, “I will prove that you were right, or I will die trying.”