Spanish soccer player Fernando Nuno LaFuente said he has no hard feelings against his former club Ballybrack FC after he learned that the club had faked his death in order to skip a match last weekend.
“I’m alive and well,” LaFuente told Cadena Ser radio. “It seems like they wanted to get away from playing a football game and someone came up with the brilliant idea to kill me off, considering I was no longer at the club and I’m living in a different city.”
The 29-year-old said he simply moved away from the Irish club to Galway, where he works for a software company. He last played for Ballybrack last year.
The club told Leinster Senior League officials that LaFuente had died in a motorcycle accident last week in order to get their weekend match against Arklow Town canceled. The other league’s teams honored LaFuente’s death during weekend matches.
League officials became suspicious over LaFuente’s death and eventually found that the player had simply returned home.
“The football league put an obituary in the local newspaper,” said Lafuente. “I only found out on Tuesday afternoon at 8 p.m. regarding what had happened after getting a call from my boss telling me that I was all over the news.
“He knew I was alive because he had spoken to me. I didn’t even know that at the weekend all the team captains in the other games wore black armbands and a minute’s silence was observed before the games in my honor.”
The Leinster Senior League said it could be disciplining Ballybrack, which blamed the false death on a “gross mistake” made by someone who has since been fired.
LaFuente said he had to call his family and girlfriend in Spain to notify them of the situation before they read about his shocking fake death.
He said he enjoyed his time with the club and has received offers to play in Galway.
“People in Ireland have a sense of humor like we do in Spain and the memes started to arrive,” LaFuente said. “They put my face instead of that of Jesus Christ, another one said Fernando has returned from the dead.
“I’ve taken it in my stride. At the end of the day, no one was hurt and no damage was done.”
