Argentine defender Lucas Trejo spent days digging through rubble with his bare hands. His wife Yanina and their two children, Aarón and Ainhoa, were at their family home in La Guaira when the earthquakes struck on June 24th. Trejo was at training in Caracas. He never got to say goodbye.
His club, Club Sport Marítimo de La Guaira, confirmed the deaths on Sunday. "Club Sport Marítimo de La Guaira profoundly laments the irreparable loss of the wife and sons of our player Lucas Trejo," the statement read. His brother-in-law Ricardo Ardiles described the scene: "He found absolutely nothing of what the building itself had been."
That image alone should stop you. A footballer, emotionally overwhelmed, sifting through concrete and dust where his home used to be. Football becomes completely irrelevant in moments like this.
A sport in mourning across Venezuela
Trejo's loss is only part of a wider catastrophe that has torn through Venezuelan football. Former La Guaira player Héctor Bello lost his wife Andrea — she died shielding their infant daughter, who was later pulled from the wreckage alive. Bello's Instagram tribute said everything: "I'll tell her the story of how you saved her, how you gave your own life for our daughter."
The Venezuelan Football Federation also announced the death of 18-year-old Yimvert Berroterán, a youth international who had represented the country from 2024 to 2026. Three more young players were also killed: Razan Sijaa, 18, of Caracas Fútbol Club; Víctor Palacios, 14, of Club Sport San Augustín's academy; and 17-year-old prospect Ricardo Veloz.
Five footballers dead. Families shattered. More than 1,700 people killed across the country according to Venezuelan government officials.
A footballing community gutted at its foundation
What makes this particularly painful for Venezuelan football is where the damage fell. La Guaira isn't a football backwater — it's a coastal city with a genuine football culture, and Club Sport Marítimo de La Guaira is its centrepiece. The club has now lost players' family members and faces a season in which grief will define everything before a ball is kicked.
Dodgers shortstop Miguel Rojas, who spent years playing baseball in La Guaira, narrowly avoided his own tragedy — his wife and children were in Caracas, roughly six miles south of the worst destruction. "It's really tough to see teammates of mine and players that I played with at some point in my career lose family members, to lose kids," he said. "It's been really hard for me to go to sleep at night."
For Lucas Trejo, sleep must feel like a different world entirely.
