Ben Hershey / Unsplash
An Irish soccer team is being ridiculed worldwide this week after they were caught faking the death of one of their players in order to postpone playing a match. The player wasn’t dead, he was back in Spain where he lives. And the team’s now in crisis mode to deal with the fallout from their asinine plot to not play a game.
Ballybrack FC was set to play Arklow Town last weekend but they issued a statement that one of their players, Fernando Nuno La Fuente of Spain, had died on Thursday in a car accident (he didn’t). The team, Ballybrack FC, then petitioned the league to postpone their game against Arklow Town and the request was granted. The team went so far as to hold a moment of silence for the player and posted about it on social media.
According to CNN, the team then came out and issued an apology. Admitting a ‘gross error of judgment’ and a ‘grave and unacceptable mistake.’ It also appears that they’re trying to pin this entire debacle on one employee instead of acknowledging that there were clearly a handful of people who were in the know about this because there’s no possible way in hell this was pulled off with only one person knowing what was happening.
Here’s the statement Ballybrack FC released on Tuesday:
“It has come to the attention of both the club, senior players and the management team that a gross error of judgment has occurred emanating from correspondence sent from a member of the senior set-up management team to the Leinster Senior League,” a statement from Dublin-based Ballybrack said on Tuesday.
“As of this evening an emergency meeting was held and the person in question has been relieved of all footballing duties, within Ballybrack FC, its senior team and roles within the club itself. The club has contacted Fernando to confirm his whereabouts, wellbeing and are thankful for his acceptance of our apology on this matter.
“This grave and unacceptable mistake was completely out of character and was made by a person who has been experiencing severe personal difficulties unbeknownst to any other members of the club. The club will continue to provide a duty of care to all parties and offer the support that may be needed at this time.” (via)
Ballybrack FC is a team in the Leinster Senior League, and a league official has released this statement in response to this completely asinine move by the team.
According to SI Soccer, the team’s story began to fall apart on Monday when it was discovered that the player actually went back to Spain a few days ago and not a few weeks ago as they were claiming. The league reportedly called the team to express condolences but weren’t able to get any answers from the club, and that’s when the string began to unravel.
“We don’t honestly know why they did it,” league chairman David Moran told RTE. “It seems a bit extreme to do something like that to get a game off. All they had to say was they were giving a walkover and they’ll get their fine and that’s the end of it.” (via)
I honestly can’t imagine being so afraid of playing a match that I was willing to fake a teammate’s death to get out of playing. Back in high school, we played in the same division as the IMG Academy that’s trained players like Freddie Adu, Jozy Altidore, Demarcus Beasley, and more. We’d get out asses whooped by them beyond belief because there wasn’t a mercy rule in h.s. soccer in our area. Even then, the idea of not playing the match was insane, let alone faking someone’s death to get out of it. Unreal.