Jesús de Miguel: The Late-Blooming Striker Who Died After a Collision in Tenerife

Jesús de Miguel died on 3 November 2026, the day after a collision with FC Andorra goalkeeper Jesús Owono at Tenerife's Estadio Heliodoro Rodríguez López caused a blunt cardiac injury and sent him into cardiac arrest. He was 30. He had made his professional debut only at 27, and months earlier he had helped Tenerife back into the Segunda División, according to his Wikipedia biography.

His was the kind of career most footballers actually have and few people outside the stands follow: nine clubs, years in Madrid's regional and fourth-tier football, 149 appearances and 48 goals in the third tier, four promotions, and 39 games in the second division. He was not a famous player. He was a working striker who kept climbing.

What happened after the collision is now the subject of two police investigations. One concerns a possible involuntary manslaughter charge. The other, opened by the homicide unit of the National Police Corps, looks at the protocols followed by the medical team who treated him at the stadium. Their findings will shape how Spanish football understands a death that stopped its cup competitions for a day.

Madrid's youth leagues and a 14-goal season

De Miguel was born in Madrid on 21 September 1996. His parents came from Navahermosa, a village in the province of Toledo, and he spent his childhood summers there. That connection matters to the end of this story: Navahermosa is where his father was when the collision happened, and the village later declared official mourning for him.

He came through the youth systems of Lugo Fuenlabrada and Leganés and made his senior debut with Leganés's reserves in the Preferente de Madrid, a regional league well below the professional game. In 2016 he went back to Lugo Fuenlabrada and scored 14 goals in the campaign, the first season in which his scoring stood out.

On 20 July 2017 he joined Internacional de Madrid in the Tercera División and helped them win promotion to Segunda División B. That earned him a move within the division to Fuenlabrada on 18 July 2018. On paper it was the next rung up. In practice it was where his progress first stalled.

A step down to Navalcarnero

At Fuenlabrada he was rarely used. In January 2019 he went on loan to Unión Adarve, another third-division side, until the end of the season, and made just two appearances there. On 2 July 2019 he signed for Navalcarnero in the fourth tier. At 22, a player who had been in the third division a year earlier was now a division below it.

The drop worked. De Miguel scored 11 goals in the 2019–20 campaign as Navalcarnero won promotion to the third division, the second time he had helped a club up. The following season was harder: an injury cost him three months of 2020–21, and he left Navalcarnero on 3 July 2021, aged 24.

Two things in that period recur in the rest of his career. He scored when he was given a run of games, and injuries kept interrupting those runs. Both shaped what came next in Salamanca and Castellón.

Salamanca: his best spell

Within hours of leaving Navalcarnero, de Miguel agreed a deal with Unionistas de Salamanca, then in the Primera División RFEF, the renamed third tier. His first season there was the most productive of his career to that point: 12 goals, in a campaign in which Unionistas missed the playoffs on the final day.

Midway through that season, in February 2022, he told El Norte de Castilla how he saw it. Jesús de Miguel put it simply:

Right now at Unionistas I'm in my best spell as a professional.

The next season undid much of that. Injuries hit him in the first half of 2022–23, and he scored once in 17 appearances. A striker with one goal in half a season is usually on the way out of a club's plans. Instead, a club near the top of the division came for him.

Castellón and the €145,000 move

On 31 January 2023 Unionistas transferred de Miguel to Castellón, who were second in the same division. Unionistas reported the fee as €145,000, a significant sum at that level for a player coming off an injury-hit half-season. He scored four goals in 11 league matches for the rest of the season, despite missing six consecutive games through injury, and added two more in the promotion playoffs. Castellón reached the final and lost it to Alcorcón.

The club kept faith. He renewed his contract on 21 December 2023, extending it to 2026, and in 2023–24 he was the top scorer in his group with 16 goals as the Orelluts won promotion to the Segunda División. It was his highest tally in any season of his career, and the third promotion he had been part of.

A professional debut at 27

De Miguel made his professional debut on 17 August 2024, aged 27, starting in a 1–0 away defeat at Eibar. A month later, on 16 September, he scored his first professional goals, two of them in a 5–2 away win at Almería.

Those were most of his goals at that level. He finished the season with three from 34 games, mostly as a substitute, while Castellón avoided relegation. The contrast with the third tier is stark: there he averaged roughly a goal every three games across 149 appearances; in the Segunda División it was three goals in 39, about one every 13. That gap is the ordinary distance between the two divisions, and the reason so many prolific third-tier strikers never cross it at all.

Tenerife: six goals in five games

On 8 July 2025 de Miguel signed a three-year deal with Tenerife, who had just been relegated to the third division. It was a bet from both sides: a club wanting an immediate return, and a striker who knew that division better than almost anyone. He scored six goals in his first five matches and finished the campaign with 11 as Tenerife went back up to the Segunda División at the first attempt.

That made four promotions in his career, two of them to the second tier in the space of three seasons. The same year, he and his partner, María, had a daughter. His 39 Segunda División games include the 34 he played for Castellón, which leaves five for Tenerife in the new season before 2 November.

2 November 2026

On 2 November 2026, in a match against FC Andorra at the Estadio Heliodoro Rodríguez López, de Miguel collided with the Andorra goalkeeper, Jesús Owono. The impact caused a blunt cardiac injury and his heart stopped. He was resuscitated while being taken to the University Hospital of Nuestra Señora de Candelaria in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, where he died the following day, aged 30. Owono was sent off after the collision.

His family saw it from far away. El Español reported that his father watched the clash on television from a bar in Navahermosa, the village in Toledo where de Miguel had spent his summers as a boy.

1. Nov 2, 2026

   Collision and cardiac arrest

   De Miguel collides with Andorra goalkeeper Jesús Owono, who is sent off. He is resuscitated on the way to hospital in Santa Cruz de Tenerife.

2. Nov 3, 2026

   De Miguel dies, aged 30

   The Royal Spanish Football Federation postpones every Copa del Rey and Copa de la Reina game scheduled that day.

3. Nov 5, 2026

   Funeral planned

   Navahermosa, which declared three days of official mourning after his death, prepares to say goodbye.

Two investigations and a game that stopped

The police inquiry into a possible involuntary manslaughter charge follows directly from the collision and the sending-off. The second inquiry is aimed elsewhere. The homicide unit of the National Police Corps opened an investigation into the protocols followed by the medical team that cared for de Miguel at the Heliodoro Rodríguez López, in other words into what happened between the collision and his arrival at hospital.

The football response was immediate and wide. Beyond the Royal Spanish Football Federation's postponement of that day's cup games, UEFA arranged a minute's silence before matches in its tournaments, several Spanish clubs cancelled training, and Espanyol postponed the presentation of their new manager. In Navahermosa, which Cadena SER described as the Toledo town mourning him like no other, the three days of official mourning ran into the funeral planned for 5 November.

What is still open

The investigations are the obvious unknowns. Whether the police inquiry leads to any charge, and what the homicide unit concludes about the medical team's protocols at the stadium, will decide whether this death is remembered as an accident of the game or as something that could have gone differently. Those are separate questions, and an answer to one does not settle the other.

Wikipedia already lists de Miguel among association footballers who died after on-field incidents, a short and grim category. What to watch next is how Spanish football, from the Federation down to the clubs that cancelled training, responds to the medical findings once they are known. For anyone following the story, the questions below cover what is established so far.