It was never dull with Gonzalo Jara
“Sorry boss, I can’t make the game today. I’m afraid I’ve been arrested.”
It’s the sort of line you associate with Sunday League football. A phone call from a star striker saying they won’t be at Waterhall at 10.30am because they’re currently in a cell, having got into a fight on West Street at 3am in the morning. It’s certainly not what you expect from a highly paid international footballer.
Gonzao Jara was no ordinary footballer though. He had what can only be described as a screw lose. The Chilean full back was only on-loan at the Albion for half a season but in that time he managed to get banned from his national team, arrested on the morning of a game and then brought the curtain down on his Albion career with a ridiculous red card for a horror tackle away at Blackpool.
It wasn’t just Jara’s time at the Amex that was full of madcap events either. Six months before Gus Poyet brought him to Sussex from West Bromwich Albion, he was arrested for drink driving. A year after his loan spell with the Seagulls had ended, Jara grabbed Luis Suarez by the testicles in the middle of a World Cup Qualifier between Chile and Uruguay with Suarez responding by punching Jara in the face.
Even better was to come two years later for Chile against the same opponents in the quarter finals of the Copa America. This time, Jara inserted his fingers up the arse of Edinson Cavani, who responded to this unwanted invasion of his rectum by flicking Jara in the chin. Jara then went down as if he’d been shot, rolling around on the floor with the result being a red card for Cavani. Chile would go onto win the game 1-0 on their way to winning the tournament, helped in part by Jara’s bastard behaviour.
Of course, once television replays proved that the reason Cavani had reacted how he did was because he had been anally fingered by Jara, there was outrage. As a result, Jara was banned for three games, fined £4,775 and found his contract with Bundesliga side Mainz being ripped up because of his theatrics.
There was never a dull moment with Jara around. He arrived at Brighton on a three month loan deal from the Hawthorns in late October 2011, part of a double swoop by Poyet that also saw goalkeeper Steve Harper sign from Newcastle United and was designed to sure up a defence that had begun leaking goals as the difference in quality between League One and the Championship began to show.
Jara took Inigo Calderon’s spot at right back, marking his debut with a booking in a 1-0 home defeat to West Ham United. He then starred in a 0-0 draw away at Birmingham City, before jetting off on international duty. Jara joined up with the Chile squad on the Tuesday and by the Wednesday he was banished, sent home by coach Claudio Borghi after missing a 10pm curfew by 45 minutes.
After that, an injury kept him out until the start of December, when he was recalled for games with Nottingham Forest and Middlesbrough. A week on from the Albion’s 1-0 defeat at the Riverside Stadium saw Burnley visit the Amex, the day when Poyet received that most Sunday League of phone calls.
Jara had been spotted by police on the morning of the game driving an Audi Q7 sports car which had no insurance. It then became apparent that the reason it had no insurance was because Jara was meant to be serving a 17-month ban for drink driving that he’d been hit with six months previously.
As a result, Jara was arrested four hours before kick off and was still in custody as the teams took to the field. He was sat in a cell as Romain Vincelot saw red after only six minutes and was still there when Ashley Barnes followed suit after 12. When asked about Jara’s absence after the 1-0 defeat, Poyet put it down to “personal reasons”. Just two days later, he was recalled by West Brom due to a defensive crisis at the Hawthorns.
That whole missing-a-game-due-to-being-arrested episode didn’t diminish Poyet’s fondness of the right back. On January 22nd, Jara was fined £3,500 and had another 12 months added to his driving ban by Brighton Magistrates Court after pleading guilty to driving while disqualified and without insurance and nine days after that, he was back at the Albion on loan until the end of the season.
Jara managed eight further appearances before his next disaster occurred when he was shown that red card in the 3-1 defeat at Bloomfield Road. The game was an hour old and Brighton 2-1 behind to Blackpool when Jara launched into a wild tackle on Keith Southern. With the benefit of hindsight, the Tangerines winger should have been grateful that Jara only tried to break his leg rather than insert his hand anywhere near Southern’s bottom.
That dismissal was pretty much the end of the Jara’s brief Albion career. He played just twice more to take his Brighton record onto 14 games, four yellow cards and one red. Rather than attempt to sign the Chilean on a permanent deal in the summer of 2012, Poyet instead moved for a right back who was a lot less of a loose cannon. The new man went by the name of Bruno Saltor.
That didn’t work out too badly now, did it?
