The reality show “Big Brother” has become a household name in Israel. A mainstream, mainstream program, which was once the flagship of the Channel 2 franchise “Keshet”, and today is broadcast in parallel – “Reshet”. The format was successful in Israel after thriving elsewhere in the world: no less than 504 seasons of the show were broadcast around the world, in 62 different countries. One of them is Brazil, where only the show has aired for more than 22 seasons, including one that is currently airing.
How does all this relate to football? Well, in the current season of “Big Brother VIP” in Brazil participates who is considered, for a long time, one of the great pioneers on the continent. His name is Mario Jardell, and European football fans remember him mainly thanks to an unforgettable period in the Porto media, in the late 1990s and early 2000s. His story was another classic case of a meteoric rise, but also a painful crash – which almost ended in real life danger.
Jardel was born in Fortaleza and grew up in the youth department of Vasco da Gama. After five years in the uniform of the Brazilian luxury team, he was not very impressive – and set out to seek his fate in Europe. In the summer of 1996 he was interested in his services in the issue of Lisbon and Rangers, but in the end he chose to land in Porto, which paid off and very much. In his four seasons in the team uniform in blue and white, Jardel has scored no less than 170 goals in 175 appearances in all competitions. In his final season, 99/2000, he reached 56 (!) Goals – and twice won the European “Golden Shoe”, the title given to the outstanding goal scorer on the continent.
In the summer of 2000, UEFA Cup holder Glatsray decided to go big – and paid $ 28 million for it. Jardel went on to deliver the goods on the pitch, with 34 goals in 42 appearances in his first season at the club (including a double against Real Madrid in the European Super Cup ), But a series of personal problems off the field, as well as some injuries, signaled that this was not the right place. He returned to Portugal, and moved to Sporting Lisbon.
Because behind the man who did not stop scoring, there was a difficult life story. He grew up in a home for a poor family, with a father who died at a young age, and a mother who, following the grief of her husband who passed away, suffered from depression and excessive drinking. When the meteoric success in Porto came, so did the drug addiction. When he returned for a vacation at Fortaleza, he recounted, “Curiosity started, and then I tried cocaine for the first time.” From there, his career began to stall – along with a personal crisis: in the summer of 2002, after another successful season in a Sporting uniform, he received the message that he would not be called up to the Brazil squad; And on a personal level, separated from his wife, Karen Ribeiro. These two gospels together crushed him.
“The breakup made me break up. I admit I was weak. I got into a difficult phase in life, I wasted a lot of money, I was irresponsible.” At one point he was also hospitalized following a drug addiction, and his football career began to deteriorate – in the summer of 2003 he moved to the English Bolton Wonders, but recorded in the media only seven league appearances without a single goal. He continued to change teams almost every year, until retiring from active play in the media of Rio Negro, a team from the lower leagues in Brazil, in 2011.
Since then, Jardell has been out of the spotlight – until he returned to them under slightly bizarre circumstances: in 2014 he announced in an interview that he intends to run for the presidency of Brazil – no less, after repeatedly making it clear he was “clean.” Jardel, of course, was not elected to the presidency, but did manage to be elected to the Brazilian parliament; But that is also where the demons from the past came from. The former footballer’s political career ended with allegations of corruption, allegations that he used drugs during his tenure – and even allegations that he appointed an escort girl as a clerk in his office.
After years of personal struggle, in 2019 Jardel announced that he had cleaned up: he married a new woman, returned to live in Fortaleza, the city where he grew up, but changed his skin. “I go to church three times a week, trying to be with the right friends,” he said after years. Then came the participation in “Big Brother,” which raised quite a few question marks. Local psychologists have argued that a format similar to that of “Big Brother,” in which people are imprisoned in one house, may adversely affect people who have systematically used drugs, such as Jardel. On the other hand, he himself says that “television saved him,” and he also told the confession as part of the program. On the other hand, he experienced a terrible incident on the air in which he spread throughout all parts of his body, which may indicate his unsettled mental state.
Jardell is another sad story about how success can dazzle. The footballers who come to these places, quite a few times from families where poverty has been significantly present, encounter amounts of wealth – and do not always know what to do with it. Everyone will learn the lesson for themselves, but in my opinion this is another lesson about how very important it is to help them in the stages of aliyah. Remind them of the proportions, understand that success – even if it is insane – eventually passes, and also build a better path to the future.