Use a model instance in different controller - Laravel 5

There is a HomeController in app/Http/Controllers and a Player model in app.

HomeController:

namespace App\Http\Controllers;

Player:

namespace App;
use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;

Double-checked, the Player model gets PSR-4 autoloaded. I've tried to use various versions in HomeController, but it keeps trying to look for Eloquent class (which Player extends) in wrong paths. Also, in the tested HomeController method, instantiating the model is foggy, do I need to prefix the namespace now? because with or without use command it does not work.