You do not always need to play well to end up called up by a country that is not yours. Sometimes all it takes is a database error in Football Manager.
A “mistake” that became a phenomenon
Ruben Aguilar is a French full-back, born in Grenoble, who was playing for Montpellier at the time. In Football Manager, he was listed with dual French and Bolivian nationality, which was not true. The mistake came from a geographical mix-up: Aguilar’s father is from Santa Cruz de Tenerife, in Spain. Someone, somewhere, confused it with Santa Cruz de la Sierra, in Bolivia.
That was enough. After a standout performance against Paris Saint-Germain, Bolivian fans began flooding him with messages on social media, convinced they had found a new player for their national team.
When the Bolivian federation called for real
The joke grew so big that the Bolivian Football Federation formally contacted Aguilar to find out if he would be available to represent the country, a few rounds before the end of South American qualifying for the 2018 World Cup.
Aguilar had to publicly clear up the confusion, in French and Spanish, stating that he had no connection to Bolivia beyond the coincidence of names. As he explained to Goal.com: “I think it all started with Football Manager. They put that I had both nationalities and I started getting messages from Bolivian fans after games.”
Neither Spanish nor Bolivian, just database confusion
The truth is much simpler than the legend: French mother, Spanish father, a surname that sounds South American but has nothing to do with Bolivia. Aguilar carried on his career as normal in France and later signed for AS Monaco, without ever wearing the Bolivian shirt, of course.
Proof that the FM database has more power than any scouting department would like to admit.
