The Ecuadorian football player Mario Pineida was murdered in an attack this Wednesday, his team reported. Barcelona from Guayaquiland the police authorities are focusing on the fact that the incident is linked to violence in this country due to drug trafficking. The news caused shock in Ecuadorian football and especially among fans of the Canary Islands.
“Barcelona announces with deep regret that it has been officially informed of the death of our player Mario Pineida, an event that occurred afterwards.” an attack against him“, stated the club via its account on the social network leaves us deeply dismayed to all of us who are part of this institution and we mourn as a Barcelona family,” the statement continued.
The event, described by local media, occurred at the exit of a grocery store in the north of the city Pineida and his wife were fatal victims of the attack. The crime was confirmed by the Interior Ministry, after which a special police unit was “working on the case.”
According to preliminary information from the first police officer who arrived at the scene, Armed people intercepted the couple and opened fire from a motorcyclewhich led to the fatal outcome. The player’s mother was also injured and taken to a hospital.
Pineida, 33, played for this institution for the second time since 2023 and was part of the Ecuadorian team that took part in the qualifiers for the 2018 World Cups in Russia and Qatar 2022.
In the hours before his death The footballer shared a statement addressed to the club’s board of directors in the story of his Instagram account.in which the players of the Barcelona squad denounced the non-payment of their salaries since December 2024, which was entirely related to the situation in which they found themselves.
Even this post warned fans and “public opinion” that the team had decided: “Do not show up for training until payments are settledand they were “I’m looking into the possibility of not showing up to play this weekend“, among other details. At the moment there is no information about the events, but it remained the last message from the player on the Ecuadorian morning when no one could imagine the outcome.
Pineida, who also played 24 games in the Fluminense jersey, He was a reference in Barcelonaa club that he represented in 224 games and for which he scored three goals. He also played 152 games for Independiente del Valle, in which he scored four goals, and completed his sporting record with nine games for El Nacional.
A game action in which Pineida may be remembered by Boca fans It is from 2021, when the defender was also in Barcelona. Back then, in a Copa Libertadores match that his team won 1-0, he fought with Nicolás Capaldo near the sector where the Xeneize substitutes’ bench was located and in the middle of the battle with the midfielder, in momentum eventually ended with coach Miguel Ángel Russo losing stability and falling spectacularly on the defender’s body. The coach immediately stood next to the defender and signaled to the referee that everything was okay.
Last September, three players from Ecuador’s second soccer league were murdered, one of them allegedly in a sports betting case. A month later the local footballer Bryan Angulowho was unequipped, was injured after being attacked by gunfire.
Ecuador is facing a spiral of drug violence and will end the year with the highest murder rate in Latin America: 52 per 100,000 inhabitants, according to the Organized Crime Observatory.
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