Unusual: they made a minute of silence and he was alive

The Irish amateur football club Ballybrack FC had to ask for a humiliating apology on Wednesday after announcing that one of its players, the Spanish Fernando Nuno Lafuente, was dead.

This third division team from South Dublin said they did not feel strong enough to play his league match against Arklow last weekend because of the death of the player in a motorcycle accident Friday morning.

But the Spaniard, who had settled in Galway, in the west of the country, was doing well.

"The club, the players and the management team were informed that a serious misjudgment had been made. correspondence sent by a member of the management team to the Leinster Senior League, "said Ballybrack apologetically on his Facebook page.

"This serious and unacceptable error was committed by a person experiencing serious personal difficulties without any other member of the club knowing it, "he added.

According to the Irish public TV channel RTÉ, the club's secretary left office after the scandal.

"You are a star"

Ballybrack did not specify whether the imbroglio was due to a simple mistake or whether it was a ploy to cancel the match. But he said that he had contacted Lafuente "to confirm his comings and goings and his well-being".

"We are grateful to you for accepting our apologies", he badured.

The player, who according to the Irish press works for a computer company, seems to have accepted the news of his death with serenity and good humor.

"It's fun for me because I was able to witness my own death," he told Irish radio, explaining that he knew what he was up to. 39, was past Tuesday when he was called while he was playing a video game after his day's work.

Thinking that it was a premeditated act, Lafuente said that he had been contacted by Ballybrack last week to warn him that he might be in danger. hear about him on the news.

But he had never imagined that it would go so far: "I thought they would say that I had broken a leg or something," said the resurrected man.

– "A little extreme" –
The authorities of the Irish amateur league opened an investigation and declared themselves disconcerted by what happened.

"Honestly, we do not know why they did it," David Moran, president of the Leinster Senior League, told RTÉ. "It seems a bit extreme to do something like that to cancel a match," he added.

Last weekend, all games in this division were preceded by a minute of silence. One of the clubs, the Liffey Wanderers, has posted a Twitter photo of the tribute made at his party and expressed his "heartfelt condolences". The league even published Monday a message of condolence in an Irish newspaper.

"We act in good faith," said Moran. "On the weekends, we spent a minute of silence for this young man – it's absolutely ridiculous."

Moran explained by phone that he had contacted the club to convey his condolences, to be able to attend the funeral and ask what they could do to help the family.

The answer from a Ballybrack official left him with the fly behind the ear: the body had been repatriated to Spain on Saturday.

"Immediately, this triggered our alarm signals," he says. "How could he have died on Friday morning and been sent to Spain on Saturday?"

Source: DPA

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