Argentine newspaper's documents shows Facundo Garces has no Malaysian ancestry

Garces is one of seven naturalized players suspended from football activities by FIFA for one year for using falsified documents to represent Malaysia.

Newspaper Capital de Noticias, based in Santa Fe, where Garces was born, said it had access to original documents proving that the player has no Malaysian ancestry, as the Football Association of Malaysia (FAM) had declared.

In a report released on Oct. 6, FIFA concluded that FAM had manipulated the birth certificates of the players' grandparents to legitimize their playing for the national team.

Facundo Garces during a training session of Deportivo Alaves. Photo by Instagram/@facundogarces

The birth certificate FAM submitted to FIFA shows that Garces' grandfather was named Carlos Rogelio Fernandez, born on May 29, 1930, in Penang, Malaysia. However, documents provided to FIFA by the Santa Fe provincial civil registry prove otherwise, that Fernandez was born in the Villa Maria Selva neighborhood of Santa Fe, more than 14,000 km from Malaysia.

The date of birth in FAM's records is true, but the place of birth is false.

The official record of the civil registry shows that Fernandez's mother, Sebastiana Justa Fernandez, is Argentine, lives on Street 22 (now Gorostiaga Street) and gave birth at home on the afternoon of May 29, 1930.

The document also includes the name of a witness, Cipriano Garces, who later became the husband of Sebastiana and the great-grandfather of Facundo Garces. Cipriano is listed as a businessman with Spanish nationality. According to the original document, neither the grandparents or the great-grandparents of Garces have any connection with Malaysia.

Facundo Garces was born on Sept. 5, 1999, in Santa Fe and spent his youth football career at local Colon. In January 2025, he moved to Spain to play for Deportivo Alaves in La Liga, quickly becoming a key player of the team. He debuted for Malaysia in the 4-0 win over Vietnam in the 2027 Asian Cup qualifiers on June 10, 2025.

According to FIFA, Club Atletico Velez Sarsfield midfielder Machuca also used a fake birth certificate for his grandmother. FAM had provided records stating she was born in Penang, but data from Argentina confirmed she was actually from Roldan, a town in Santa Fe.

Five other players suspended are Rodrigo Holgado (Argentina), Jon Irazabal Iraurgui and Gabriel Arrocha (Spain), Joao Vitor Brandao Figueiredo (Brazil) and Hector Alejandro Hevel Serrano (Netherlands).