Tenerife manager Alvaro Cervera said the 12-match suspension handed to FC Andorra goalkeeper Jesus Owono may look light compared with other cases, but that the disciplinary rules left no room for a different outcome. The Spanish football federation’s disciplinary committee confirmed the ban on Friday, imposing the maximum punishment available to it.
Owono, 25, was sent off after colliding with Tenerife forward Jesus de Miguel late in the Spanish second-tier match between the clubs on 2 November. De Miguel, 30, died the following day.
The committee said it could consider only the offence on the field, not “the tragic outcome of the incident,” and that its decision had to rest on “the facts expressly recorded in the referee’s report.” The referee’s report recorded that Owono was sent off for “violently striking an opponent in the chest with his leg, using excessive force, while the ball was in play.” The 12-match ban was the maximum it could impose under those limits.
Speaking before Tenerife’s fixture against Ceuta on Sunday, the team’s first match since De Miguel’s death, Cervera said rules must be followed. “I think that, just as in other areas of life, there are rules or laws that must be followed,” he said. “Since the current regulations don’t specifically account for what happened, I believe they have simply adhered to the rules and imposed the number of matches permitted by the regulations.”
Cervera added that anything else he might say would be his personal opinion, which he would keep to himself. The ban “might seem a bit light” compared with other cases, he said, but the rules did not allow anything else.
Cervera, 61, called the return to training and preparation “tough” and “complicated.” He said the squad was fine when together and training well, and that the group seemed to be gradually returning to normal. The uncertainty was how players were coping away from the club. “What we don’t know is how everyone is doing when we’re apart and that’s a significant factor,” he said.
He noted that players have different ways of coping and different support systems, with some having people at home to support them and others more on their own. “We’re making progress, a very slow process, but we are moving forward – it’s tough, it’s complicated,” Cervera said.
Cervera said he was not sure his players were ready to play again. Some would welcome a distraction, he said, while others would not yet be in the right frame of mind, and both reactions were reasonable. “Both positions are reasonable,” he said. “On one hand, you want to return to some sense of normality though you know that true normality isn’t something you’ll find right now.”
He said the death could not be set aside or pushed to the back of the mind, unlike other life events. “It’s always there, constantly on your mind, yet we have to keep going,” he said.