Tenerife must navigate grief after the death of Jesús de Miguel

Tenerife must come to terms with the death of Jesús de Miguel and find the strength to return to competition. The player’s death, following a fatal challenge at the Heliodoro by Andorra goalkeeper Jesús Owono, has deeply affected the club’s dressing room. Jesús de Miguel’s absence will be part of the team’s everyday reality as it goes through a period of mourning before returning to normality. For CD Tenerife, this is a situation no team can be prepared for.

Tenerife president Felipe Miñambres described the scale of the shock and the need for outside support: “It is very hard; we need professional help.” He also said that players, their loved ones and club staff would need support, adding that this had already begun. “We will always carry him in our hearts. It is a very great tragedy,” he said.

Sports psychologist José Antonio Luengo stresses how important it is to manage such an event within a dressing room. Grief, he explains, disrupts people’s bearings and is not experienced in the same way by everyone. Some players may be more deeply affected, while others can help support the group. Luengo recommends identifying those figures and building around them “a kind of ‘guard of honour’ to protect the dressing room”. The aim, he insists, is to protect the players emotionally and allow them to grieve without placing further burdens on them.

The group can also provide a space in which people share their pain. One account describes crying together, embracing and learning to live in this new reality. Yet the loss does not affect everyone equally: Morilla says that grief depends both on the importance of the person who has died and on how each individual processes the loss. The journey is therefore personal, even as the group seeks to rebuild together.

Escudé’s experience offers another perspective on the role of solidarity. “What matters is feeling supported, the identity of the group, of the club,” he says, urging Tenerife to draw on the ties that bind its members. He also believes tragedy can bring a collective closer together: “What happened to Antonio united Sevilla supporters a great deal.” For Tenerife, the priority now is to protect its players and give them the time they need to face this absence.