The footballer Jonathan Gómez revealed his gambling addiction: “Today I lost everything, I don’t know if I will be able to play football again”

Footballer Jonathan Gómez revealed details about the difficult personal moment he is going through as a consequence of his gambling addiction and explained how gambling addiction ended up affecting his family life, his professional career, and his finances.

The Sarmiento de Junín player stated that he has been without making bets for four months, is receiving medication, and is under professional supervision. “I lost everything. I have lost everything today. I am in a process with my family in which it is almost destroyed, I have a process in which I don’t know if I will be able to play football again, which is what I love the most,” he expressed.

The debt from gambling and the extortion complaint

Gómez also referred to the legal conflict arising from his gambling debts. According to his account, he accumulated a significant debt with an underground betting platform and later reported having suffered extortion.

However, the Justice system dropped the complaint filed by the footballer. Prosecutor Aquiles Balbis decided not to continue the investigation, considering that there were no “serious elements to continue the investigation.”

The player had reported that he was forced to sign four promissory notes at a notary's office for a debt that, according to his presentation, amounted to 505,000 dollars. As a consequence of the conflict, a house, an apartment, a car, and his bank accounts were seized.

When directly asked about his problem, Gómez responded straightforwardly: “Do you acknowledge yourself as a gambler?” “Yes, yes, yes...”.

When Jonathan Gómez's addiction began

The footballer identified the start of his problem in 2020, when he returned from Brazilian football, where he had played for Sport Recife, to join Argentinos Juniors.

He explained that online betting began as an activity that progressively ended up affecting various aspects of his daily life. “It distracts you, not only at work but in day-to-day life, it changes your mood, it changes your personality,” he recounted.

Gómez acknowledged that his surroundings began to notice changes in his behavior while he tried to hide the problem. His wife also asked him what was happening, but the footballer admitted that the addiction even altered his way of relating.

Gómez compared gambling addiction to a dependency and emphasized the difficulty of identifying it from the outside. “This is a drug. I want people to be clear about this, it is like a drug. It is more silent, because I can be talking to you today and have the phone in my hand and you won’t realize that I am playing,” he explained.

The footballer also stated that the addiction prevented him from grasping the consequences of his actions: “Gambling addiction does not let you listen. It is something that does not let you think, does not let you react, they can tell you whatever.”