Juan Tuñas Bajeneta

The oldest World Cup player from CONCACAF, the oldest former footballer from North America, Central America and the Caribbean to have participated in a World Cup, died at the age of 93

Born in La Habana to a Galician father and Basque mother, he died in Ciudad de México, where he had lived for the past 70 years. The former athlete had to be hospitalized a week ago in a hospital in the Mexican capital with pneumonia due to his advanced age.

The Cuban, father of six children and grandfather to numerous grandchildren, was the sole survivor of his country's squad that played in the France 1938 World Cup, the third one held up to that point.

He was also the last living player from the Confederation of Football of North, Central America and the Caribbean (CONCACAF) who attended one of the first three World Cups.

Tuñas participated in all three matches played by Cuba at the France 1938 World Cup, for which the island qualified automatically and to which it went as the region's only team.

Cuba reached the quarterfinals, where it lost 8-0 against Sweden. In the two World Cups held before 1938, only Mexico (in Uruguay 1930) and the United States (1930 and Italy 1934) from the region participated. In Cuba, due to the influence of Spanish merchants, there was an important professional soccer championship in the early part of the last century.

Tuñas was national champion on three occasions with Centro Gallego and played his last campaign in Cuba in 1941 with the club Juventud Asturiana, which he led to the title. On one occasion, the Cuban tore a hole in the opposing goal's net with one of his goals and from then on he was nicknamed "Romperredes."

Tuñas settled in Mexico in the early 1940s, where he helped a now-defunct local club, Real España, win league titles in the 1941-42 and 1944-45 seasons.

On the team he played alongside two universal stars, Isidro Lángara from Spain and José Manuel Moreno from Argentina, and in the 1942 Mexican final, in the 5-4 victory against Atlante, he scored three goals in front of nearly 20,000 people at Parque Asturias.

In 1943 he was distinguished as the best Cuban athlete abroad and in July 1959, months after the triumph of the revolution led by Fidel Castro, he returned to La Habana to play, already retired and at age 42, a friendly match in favor of the agrarian reform law.

The last time he participated in a public event in Cuba was in late 2002, as a guest at Footballer's Day, where he received a trophy as a glory of the island's sports.