Chile’s Gonzalo Jara has been suspended for two matches for provoking Uruguay’s Edinson Cavani during their 1-0 Copa América quarter-final victory. The incident will now conecide with his suspension for the semifinal match against Peru in Santiago and the final in Santiago on Saturday if they win against the winner of Argentina/Paraguay.
The defender came up behind Cavani and poked him in the backside. The Uruguay forward reacted by raising his hand toward Jara’s head and the Chilean collapsed faking an injury. The referee missed Jara’s provocation and sent off the PSG striker.
Uruguay’s assistant coach, Mario Rebollo, has now accused Jara of making derogatory comments about Cavani’s father Luis, who was arrested after being involved in a fatal car accident, the day before the game.
“Not only did Jara touch Cavani as we saw in the pictures, but he also said something about what had happened the previous day,” Rebollo said in an interview with Uruguay’s Radio Hora 25. “He said that Cavani’s father was going to get 20 years in prison.''
His original suspension was an extra match meaning he would miss the first match of the South American 2018 FIFA World Cup qualifiers, however CONMEBOL decided to keep it to two. Jara has had a history of incidents like this with Argentine players like Gonzalo Higuain, Juan Roman Riquelme and even Lionel Messi for club and country. His German club Mainz is also threating to release him if he continues with incidents like these.
He played all of Chile matches in a 2-0 victory against Ecuador, a 3-3 draw against Mexico, a 5-0 trashing of Bolivia and of course the 1-0 victory against Uruguay as Chile look to capture their first ever Copa America in Chilean soccer history since its inception in 1916 and to look for a spot in the FIFA Confederations Cup in 2017 in Russia.