Amateur Irish Soccer Team Ballybrack FC Fakes Death of Player Who is Very Much Alive

Irish soccer team Ballybrack FC reported the tragic death of player Fernando LaFuente last Friday, saying that he had died in a traffic accident the previous night. There was only one problem: LaFuente was alive and in perfect health.

Officials in the Leinster Senior League have launched an investigation into the incident following the revelation that no death had occurred, and that team officials had purposely faked a report to suggest otherwise.

Fake Report Likely Used to Cancel Match

While the motive for the ruse hasn’t definitively been established, the apparent goal was to postpone a Saturday match against Arklow due to Ballybrack being short on available players. That match was indeed cancelled, while all other games in the league featured a moment of silence for the supposedly deceased player.

In reality, LaFuente had left the team months earlier. Ballybrack, like the teams they compete against in the Leinster Senior League, is an amateur outfit, and LaFuente’s day job had transferred him from Dublin to Galway – all the way across Ireland – earlier in the year.

League officials reacted to the news swiftly, at which point the story began to unravel. Leinster Senior League Chairman David Moran said that he tried to arrange for someone to be at LaFuente’s funeral, at which point a team official told him that the player’s body had already been transferred back to his native Spain.

“Immediately, alarm bells began to ring because there was no way arrangements like that could be made so soon after his death,” Moran told the Irish Independent. “To use a young man like this is nothing but outrageous.”

LaFuente Learns of ‘Death’ from Coworkers

LaFuente apparently knew that the team planned to use him as an excuse to try to get out of the match, but had no idea the lengths the club would go to.

“I was aware there was going to be some story on me but I thought it was going to be me breaking a leg or something like that,” LaFuente told Irish public broadcaster RTE. “After my work finished I was playing some video games, and suddenly I got a call from work…they started sending me all these news articles and mass media. And that’s how I found out I was dead.”

Ballybrack FC issued a statement saying that the report of LaFuente’s death was the result of “a gross error of judgement” by a member of the management team.

“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 statement read. “At this stage we can only offer our sincere apologies to the Leinster Senior League, our opponents Arklow Town FC and the host of clubs and football people who made contact with us or offered messages of support in recent days.”