Ex-São Paulo midfielder reveals betting addiction, extortion threats | OneFootball

Argentine midfielder Jonatan Gómez, who had a brief spell at São Paulo, publicly revealed that he suffers from gambling addiction — an addiction to gambling and online betting.

Currently without a club, the 36-year-old said in an interview with the YouTube channel MargaTV that he lost all the wealth he had built up over the course of his career on virtual casino platforms.

According to the player, the addiction began after his departure from Brazilian football. Signed by São Paulo in 2017, Gómez was loaned out to CSA and Sport before returning to Argentina in 2021 to play for Argentinos Juniors. In his account, the player described the impact of the addiction on his behavior and family life, highlighting mood swings, social isolation, and constant irritability.

Threatened with death!

In addition to the financial losses, Gómez said he was the victim of an extortion scheme stemming from an initial debt of $50,000 (around R$259,000) incurred on an illegal gambling platform.

The player said that, in October 2025, he was approached and forced into a vehicle under death threats. On that occasion, he was forced to sign four promissory notes notarized by a registry office, raising the acknowledged debt to $505,000 (approximately R$2.6 million).

The case was formally reported to the authorities in February this year, but was ultimately dismissed by the Argentine courts. The midfielder criticized the handling of the case, claiming he was not given the opportunity to testify before the prosecutor in charge. “The prosecutor didn’t even intend to hear me out,” he said.

Strong quotes

“I lost everything. Today I’ve lost everything. I’m going through a process with my family where they are almost broken, I’m going through something where I don’t know if I’ll be able to play football again, which is what I love most,” he said.

“It distracts you not only at work, but in everyday life, it changes your mood, it changes your personality. There are times now when I sit down to talk with friends and they tell me: ‘Hey, Jony, you weren’t really there.’ And I didn’t realize it, or I hid myself away. I didn’t want to go or do things. The same goes for my wife. My wife told me: ‘Jony, what’s wrong with you?’ That irritated me all the time, because it leads to that,” the midfielder explained.

“These phases are interrupted when you get hit hard, when your wife finds out, or when someone finds out, or, as in this case, when you have a debt and you don’t know how to get out of it and you hide out of fear. This is a drug. It’s more silent, because I can be talking and I can have the phone in my hand and you don’t realize that I’m playing.”

“I would change everything. The money, the moment, everything, just to have peace, so that my children can see me happy, because they haven’t seen me happy for a long time, and so that all the people who stood by me, and those I hurt, don’t suffer the way they did. Everything I have. Everything, absolutely everything,” Gómez concluded.

Football journeyman

Developed at Rosario Central, Jonatan Gómez spent most of his career in South American football. In Argentina, he played for clubs such as Banfield, Arsenal de Sarandí, Atlético Tucumán, Racing, and Sarmiento de Junín.

For São Paulo, the Argentine made only 15 appearances between 2017 and 2019, with no goals or assists, and had two loan spells during that period.

Abroad, in addition to his time in Brazilian football, he played for Independiente Santa Fe and Deportivo Pasto in Colombia, as well as having brief spells at Real Murcia in Spain and Al-Fayha in Saudi Arabia.

This article was translated into English by Artificial Intelligence. You can read the original version in 🇧🇷 here.