Pro Soccer Player Skipped Own Wedding To Sign Contract

Pro soccer player Mohamed Buya Turay tied the knot on July 21, 2022, but his marriage started off on a highly unusual note: he wasn't at the alter on wedding day.

While his bride-to-be was in Turay's native Sierra Leone, where the wedding went ahead as scheduled, the 27-year-old was thousands of miles away finalizing his transfer deal to Swedish club Malmö FF.

“We got married on July 21 in Sierra Leone,” Turay told a Swedish news outlet, per the New York Post. “But I wasn’t there because Malmo asked me to come here earlier.”

They could've simply postponed the wedding, or Turay could have talked to the big-wigs in Malmö and signed at a later date, but Turay is a team guy, and apparently so is his wife... and his brother.

The wedding went ahead as originally planned, but it was Turay's brother, not him, who stood at the alter. So, technically speaking, his brother married his wife for him.

Hey, whatever works.

Making this whole situation even more bizarre is that Turay appears in pictures from his "wedding day."

“We took the pictures in advance,” Turay said. “So it looks like I was there but I wasn’t. My brother had to represent me at the wedding itself.”

Turay was transferred to Malmö after spending several years with various clubs in the Chinese Super League and also played for Sierra Leone's national team. He said that he hopes to bring his wife to Sweden as soon as possible, but said that the honeymoon will need to wait until after Malmö's season.

“First we have to win the league and then I go on my honeymoon,” he said.

If Malmö wins an Allsvenskan championship — the top-tier of soccer in Sweden — Turay, his wife, and for that matter, his brother, should all get a share of the MVP honors.

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Matt is a University of Central Florida graduate and a long-suffering Philadelphia Flyers fan living in Orlando, Florida. He can usually be heard playing guitar, shoe-horning obscure quotes from The Simpsons into conversations, or giving dissertations to captive audiences on why Iron Maiden is the greatest band of all time.