Ivory Coast’s Yan Diomande is playing for a bigger cause. 

The pro soccer player wrote an emotional essay sharing that he’s competing at the 2026 World Cup in honor of his late sister Roxane, who died last year at the age of 15 after her drink was spiked.

“I wrote this because I can’t speak about it,” Diomande explained in a personal essay titled “Dear Roxane” for The Players’ Tribune published June 17. “I wrote this because I want you to know that I will make sure that you live on. I will make sure that everybody knows your name. The whole world.” 

He added, “Everything I do on a football pitch, it’s for you.”

The 19-year-old detailed receiving the heartbreaking news that his sister had died just as he was finally starting to find success in his athletic career. 

“I don’t even think I shed a tear the day they told me that you were gone,” he wrote. “I was just in shock. It was a few weeks after I made my debut for Leganés. Who makes their debut at 18 against Real Madrid? It was too crazy. It was a dream. And then it was a nightmare.”

“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.”