The narrow streets of Navahermosa in La Mancha were fuller than they have ever been on Thursday afternoon and quieter too. Silence accompanied the funeral cortege as its made way from the funeral home to the parish church of San Miguel Arcángel carrying Jesús de Miguel Alameda, “Demi”, the Tenerife striker who died after an on-field collision with the Andorra goalkeeper Jesús Owono three days earlier. Only 3,587 people live in his family’s village but now they were joined by the game he loved.
In moments of pain, football comes together more than ever,” said Luis de la Fuente. The Spain manager did not say much else; there was not much else he could say, not much anyone could. These have been dark, desperate days, days when it was impossible to assimilate what has happened, and there will be more.
The club’s majority shareholder, Rayco García, had cried as they left the building where De Miguel’s body had laid in Santa Cruz de Tenerife and he asked the striker’s teammates to be close to his widow Maria, when he had vowed they would for ever take care of his daughter, Clara. Maria was in the stands with 16-month-old Clara in her arms when, in the 96th minute of Monday’s second division game, she saw her partner chase a ball up the pitch to the centre circle where Owono crashed into him. De Miguel’s father was watching it from the hotel Alameda in Navahermosa, where he goes for most games.
His son’s football career had mostly been played not far from there and from the Leganés home where he had grown up – at Fuenlabrada, Inter Madrid, Unión Adarve and Navalcarnero, then Salamanca and Castellón – but now he was 1,000 miles away. Medical staff rushed on to the pitch. Players stood, terrified, while for six minutes De Miguel was treated there.
He was then taken on a stretcher to the ambulance waiting in the corner where, the club reported, they were able to re-establish a pulse. He was transferred to the Hospital Universitario de Nuestra Señora de Candelaria in Santa Cruz, where medics succeeded in getting him to breathe again. He remained in a critical condition but, with his body temperature lowered, he was stable, they said.
With De Miguel’s parents hurrying to find a flight to Santa Cruz, where García collected them, doctors told Tenerife there would be no news until the morning. But at 3am, there was another call to say his condition had deteriorated neurologically. At 8am, he passed away; Tenerife announced his passing at 8.31am.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
