Jesus de Miguel, the 30-year-old CD Tenerife forward, died in hospital on Tuesday morning after a stoppage-time collision with FC Andorra goalkeeper Jesus Owono in Monday night’s Segunda Division match in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, a match abandoned at 2-2 with nobody in the stadium thinking about football any longer. The full story of Monday night and Tuesday’s confirmation is in iimiTV’s breaking report on the death of Jesus de Miguel.
Wednesday gave the grief its formal shape. Both clubs involved on Monday night had their weekend fixtures postponed, Tenerife set out the farewell its supporters will hold on Saturday, the players’ union asked for Spanish football to stop entirely until November 9, and the support around Owono, the other man in the collision, began to be organised in public. This is what happened next, and what is still to come.
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Weekend Matches Postponed, And The Jesus De Miguel Funeral Set Out
Tenerife and Andorra’s Spanish second division matches scheduled for the weekend were postponed on Wednesday. Tenerife were due to face Granada away from home on Saturday, November 7, and Andorra were set to welcome Mallorca. “After the tragic news of the death of Tenerife player Jesus de Miguel, the game this Saturday November 7, at Nuevo Los Carmenes, has been postponed,” Granada said in a statement. Mallorca, whose match falls with it, said that “at times like this, respect and sensitivity in the face of a situation of profound grief must come first.” No new dates have been set for either fixture.
Tenerife are holding a six-day mourning period, with club activities suspended across the men’s, women’s and youth teams. The club plans to hold a tribute to De Miguel at its own stadium, the Estadio Heliodoro Rodriguez Lopez, on Saturday, which supporters can attend, in place of the match that will not be played. The first team, the board and the club’s staff will attend De Miguel’s funeral, which will take place in Navahermosa, in the province of Toledo on the Spanish mainland, where he has family roots, after the court in Santa Cruz de Tenerife approved the transfer of his remains so he can be buried there. Outside the Heliodoro, supporters have already been gathering on their own, laying flowers and lighting candles beneath a black and white image of the striker. Tenerife president Felipe Minambres put the club’s position plainly: “We need to give Demi the tribute he deserves. And from that point on we will always carry him in our hearts.”
The Silence Was Observed, And Raphinha Spoke For Many
The silence UEFA promised on Tuesday was kept on Tuesday night. A minute of silence was held before all of Tuesday’s Champions League matches in honour of the striker, and it will be observed before the rest of this week’s European fixtures as well. At the Spotify Camp Nou, where Barcelona beat Aston Villa 3-0, the silence also remembered the victims of the recent train accident in the province of Toledo. Barcelona’s players wore black armbands, and UEFA decided the Champions League anthem would not be played before the match, the club reported.
Raphinha, Barcelona’s captain on the night, scored twice in the win and then declined to discuss any of it. “Today I don’t want to talk about football, I want to send a message to the family of Jesus, may he rest in peace,” he said afterwards. “From the club, I want to send a message of strength to the family.” FC Barcelona’s own matchday film carries the night at Camp Nou, the silence first and the football after it:
The Spanish football federation, meanwhile, widened its own response: all Copa del Rey and Copa de la Reina matches this week have now been postponed as a mark of respect, beyond the Tuesday fixtures called off in the first announcement. Spanish football is not simply pausing around one club’s loss. It is clearing its calendar, competition by competition, around a second division striker from Madrid whose name most of Europe had never heard before Monday night.
Support For Owono, A Union Request, And An Inquiry
Andorra’s players observed a minute’s silence on Wednesday before a voluntary training session, which Owono, 25, did not attend. The goalkeeper, an Equatorial Guinea international, was shown a straight red card for the collision and has been the subject of hostile attacks online since Monday. The support for him, when it came, came from both directions. The president of the Equatorial Guinea federation, Venancio Tomas Micha, wrote to him on Tuesday: “I feel compelled to convey all our solidarity and support at this time to our player Jesus Lazaro Owono. We know that, as the involuntary protagonist of this tragic incident in the game, he is living through this situation with deep sorrow and distress. From the Equatorial Guinea Football Federation, we offer him all our human and professional backing.”
Tenerife defender Lautaro Spatz posted in support of Owono as well, saying he was “deeply affected” by what had happened. “Those of us who know him know the kind of person he is, how much he is suffering at this moment and that he would never intentionally hurt anyone,” Spatz wrote. “In football, unfortunate incidents can happen but no-one could imagine that one of them might end with such tragic consequences.” Owono himself wrote on Instagram that he never intended to hurt De Miguel: “I am completely devastated by what happened on the pitch yesterday. What was supposed to be just another football match turned into a tragedy that will stay with me for the rest of my life.”
The widest request of the day came from the players themselves. The Spanish Players’ Association, the AFE, has formally asked the RFEF, LaLiga and UEFA to suspend national and international matches played in Spain through November 9, citing an RFEF regulation that allows postponement in exceptional circumstances. No decision on that request had been announced by Wednesday. Alongside it, the formal process continues: Spanish police have opened an investigation into the death, the standard step when a death is classified as non-natural, and Santa Cruz de Tenerife’s chief prosecutor, Jose Luis Sanchez-Jauregui, told the EFE news agency that criminal proceedings were very unlikely, because the collision occurred during active play. An inquiry opening is not a charge, and nothing in Wednesday’s reporting suggested one is coming.
What remains is the week Tenerife has set out for itself: a funeral in Navahermosa attended by the teammates who were on the pitch on Monday, a stadium opened on Saturday evening so an island can say goodbye in person, and then, at some point, football again, under a silence that has now been kept in every European stadium that played this week. Rest in peace, Jesus de Miguel.
