Trim Function doesn't Work - php

Question

Hi (sorry for my english xD),
I'm taking data of my DB in MySql, this data (pair of players in format 'Player 1 - Player 2'). I cut this with explode function by character - therefore I get 'Player 1 ' and ' Player 2' string. I try delete white spaces at the beginning and the end with trim function, but this don't work. I suspect that this trouble is similar to other with the - character, the normal - of my keyboard don't split the string with explode function, I had to go to PHPMyAdmin and copy the - character of the one existing string and paste this in the second explode function parameter, after this, explode function work.
I try the same of the - character (Login in PHPMyAdmin copy one whitespace and paste this as second parameter of trim function but this time don't work :( ).
Also try with str_replace function (no matter what the gaps are eliminated) and don't work, also try with preg_replace function etc... nothing has work because apparently the white space saved in DB isn't the same of my keyboard, I suspect that the problem is related with charset's or collations but I don't have idea what I should do, because the table, link, charset of PHP and other thing are in UTF-8 and utf8-spanish-ci collation and charset.
Aclaration: The input of the data is made by xdom (PHP) from other site not controlled for me.
<tbody>
<?php while ($partidos = mysqli_fetch_array($sql)) { ?>
<tr>
<td class="center"><?php echo $partidos['fecha']; ?></td>
<td><?php $participante = explode("₋", $partidos['jugadores']);
$participante1 = trim($participante[0]);
$participante2 = trim($participante[1]);
echo trim($participante1) . "<br>vs<br>" . trim($participante2);
?></td>
<td><?php if ($partidos['estado'] == 0) { ?> En Curso<?php } elseif ($partidos['estado'] == 1) {
if ($partidos['alerta'] == 0) { ?> Terminado<?php } else { ?>Terminado - Error <i
class="fa fa-exclamation-triangle"></i><?php }
} ?></td>
<td><?php if ($partidos['alerta_medica'] == 1) { ?> Si <i class="fa fa-2 fa-medkit"
style="color:#C00;"></i><?php } else { ?> No<?php } ?>
</td>
<?php if ($_SESSION['tipo'] == 1 || $_SESSION['tipo'] == 2) { ?>
<td class="center">
</td>
<?php } ?>
</tr>
<?php } ?>
</tbody>

Answer 1

I found the problem thanks to #Rick James, watching the hexadecimal response of the database i noticed that two spaces are x20, but one is xC2 xA0. Reading in other post of stackoverflow, i found that xC2 xA0 is a Non-break space, but this is not recognized for the trim function. The solution was specify this as second parameter of the function:
$participante1 = trim($participante[0],"\x20,\xC2,\xA0");
$participante2 = trim($participante[1],"\x20,\xC2,\xA0");
Now the whitespaces are removed correctly :3
Thanks to all for give your help to solve this :)

Answer 2

Since you have 3 blanks on either side of the special character split the strings by 3 spaces.
like this:
<?php
foreach( $strings as $string) {
$players = explode(" ",$string);
print "Player 1: " . $players[0] . PHP_EOL;
print "Player 2: " . $players[2] . PHP_EOL;
}