Jesús de Miguel tribute across Spanish football, Digi Mart USA News (Spain): Before stepping out for his 199th Osasuna match on Saturday evening, Ante Budimir told his teammates what it meant to wear the shirt. “We don’t have this shirt today for the sake of it,” he said.
“He was not chosen, and nor are we.”
Osasuna players walked out together with footballers from Athletic Club, carrying white lilies and wearing white shirts with a No 9 on the back, a black ribbon and the name of Jesús de Miguel. The Tenerife striker died after a collision on the pitch five days earlier at the age of 30.
At the same time, Tenerife’s squad walked out at the Heliodoro Rodríguez López in Santa Cruz, wearing black suits rather than shirts, as the club had no game to play that week. Two days earlier, the players had travelled to Navahermosa, La Mancha, the village where their teammate’s family is from, to carry his coffin.
“We’ve seen how fragile life is,” captain Enric Gallego said. “To talk of you in the past tense is unfair.
None of us are prepared to live what we’re living through.”
The players’ union, in which De Miguel had a role, had asked for the competition to stop. The league did not halt play, and matches went ahead across Spain, with only fixtures involving Tenerife, Andorra and Castellón postponed.
Andorra’s goalkeeper, Jesús Owono, had collided with De Miguel, and De Miguel had taken Castellón to the second division.
Sevilla head coach Luis García said he believed the league should have waited, calling the timing too soon. Madrid played at Valencia that weekend and won 3-0, with Tenerife’s flag flying at half-mast at Mestalla.
At every first and second division match, teams walked out together in the same white shirts bearing De Miguel’s name. Flowers were laid in the centre circle where he had fallen, and a minute’s silence was observed.
A video of his best moments was shown on stadium screens, and a QR code linked to a crowdfunding campaign for his young family, set up by former Tenerife player Fran Sol.
At Tenerife’s home ground, the tribute continued with flowers, candles and a giant shirt on one end of the pitch. Supporters attended in Tenerife shirts, and players from rival Las Palmas also came.
Tenerife’s majority shareholder, Rayco García, said of the gathering: “This is the Canaries I want.”
The club announced it would adopt De Miguel’s 14-month-old daughter, Carla, supporting her economically until she turns 18, and promised never to leave his widow, María, alone. Gallego addressed the young girl, saying he hoped she would one day be proud of her father, “not just for the footballer he was but the person: for his humility, his goodness.”
