Tenerife's Grief: Death of 30-Year-Old Forward, 'Excessive Force' Report and Questions Over Medical Protocol

Late evening, Monday, 2 November. The Tenerife pitch. The match has stopped, but the scoreboard is not yet saying anything. Jesus de Miguel, a 30-year-old forward, is being carried on a stretcher toward a hospital that is already too far away. According to El Día, the player on the spinal board was taken to the ambulance almost at a running pace — a method the newspaper itself called "absolutely not to be done." That single sentence turns this whole matter from a football accident into an administrative inquiry.

This is not a sports-page story. It is an inquiry-page story. A Juzgado de Instrucción in Santa Cruz de Tenerife has opened proceedings, and the Canary Islands Superior Court (TSJC) has confirmed it. The word used in the referee's match report against goalkeeper Owono is "excessive force." That word sits at the top of the Laws of the Game three-tier scale (careless → reckless → excessive force). It is the threshold for serious foul play, which carries a mandatory red card regardless of outcome. But the source report nowhere says whether a red card was actually shown — and that is the biggest hole in this story.

Police are also reviewing whether the tackle could constitute involuntary manslaughter. A preliminary post-mortem report is in, but supplementary tests are pending — and investigators already hold video recorded on social media. One line buried in the report — "some inconsistencies in the reports, or information that may be inaccurate when compared with other evidence, such as videos recorded and posted on social media" — tells us the official account and the spectators' cameras are fighting each other. In my 26 years, a sentence like that is enough to change the direction of any investigation.

Two tracks run through this case, at different speeds. First, the disciplinary track (RFEF): the referee's "excessive force" wording launches proceedings almost automatically. Second, the criminal track: Spanish courts treat sport as a sphere of "permitted risk" (riesgo permitido) — an injury sustained in normal play does not become a crime by itself unless a breach of the rules and a direct causal link are proven. Legal experts quoted in the report expect no charges. So the two roads can end in different places: a ban may come, a conviction probably will not.

But the biggest question, larger than any referee report, is the supplementary post-mortem report. If it reveals a pre-existing pathology or an atypical physiological response, the causal chain shifts entirely away from the tackle — and the disciplinary and criminal tracks each go their own way. The document that decides this case is not from the pitch; it is from the lab.

There is another layer that the Spanish media has opened up: the medical response. Investigators have asked when oxygen reached the field, when the defibrillator was deployed, how the player was moved to the ambulance on the spinal board, and have summoned the medical staff. El Día's question is direct: did the medical team fully discharge its professional duty? This is not a football failure. It is a protocol failure. And a protocol failure grips a club in a way a run of bad results never does.

I want to be clear here, because part of the media is reading it backwards. In Spain, opening a homicide-unit investigation into any unnatural death is procedurally routine. It does not mean the goalkeeper is a suspect. Reading it that way would be a category error, and much of the coverage is making exactly that error. Likewise, the claim of a "long-term suspension" in the report has no named source — it is a low-reliability claim. Given the referee's wording, a suspension in some form is probable, but its length cannot be known without the disciplinary committee's reasoning.

There is a contradiction here that must be conceded. This whole case orbits "excessive force," because that is the word the referee wrote. But under the Laws of the Game, excessive force is a sport-specific category tied to on-field sanction — not to criminal liability. The club's and medical team's exposure, on the other hand, will be set not by that word but by the timeline recorded on the journey to the ambulance. Public anger is aimed at the goalkeeper; institutional risk sits in the medical room and the club office. That imbalance is the real story.

One more thing present in the source but picked up by nobody: no official club statement is quoted anywhere in the report. In a story whose centre is the club, the club's voice is missing. In Spanish football, silence or defensive messaging in such crises tends to increase the perception of culpability — a risk the club has created for itself. And the dressing room: after the death of a 30-year-old teammate, how robust the psychological-support structure is matters more than any on-field tactic. And that goalkeeper, who is simultaneously a bereaved participant and a subject of investigation — football administration appears to have no ready protocol for his care.

One window of relief exists for Tenerife: the supplementary post-mortem report. If it confirms a pre-existing condition, the criminal file may be archived and the matter may shrink to the disciplinary sphere alone. If not, the inquiry's reach will widen to the club, its medical staff and the match organiser — and the question will hang over every pitch-side protocol in Spanish football. Until then, the scoreboard from that Monday evening is saying nothing. I did not file a score that day — because in a match where a player lost his life, before recording the score we must first decide what we are recording: a defeat, or a failure.