Mário Jardel

Club

International

Jardel was capped for the national team first when he was 19 years old. In March 1993, Jardel capped one time for the Brazil national under-20 football team during the FIFA U-20 World Cup in Australia. Brazil became champions of the tournament. Jardel's debut for the Seleção was as a substitute replacing Ronaldo during a friendly game against Russia in August 1996. He was also a part of the national team squad during the Copa América tournament in 2001.

Brazil

Jardel played first for Vasco da Gama, but moved in 1995 to Grêmio, where he played a major role in the squad that won the 1995 Copa Libertadores, scoring 12 goals to be crowned the tournament's top goal scorer, including a hat-trick in the quarter-finals against Roberto Carlos' Palmeiras, and a goal in the final against Atlético Nacional.

Porto

In 1996, Jardel was linked to several teams, and after failing to transfer to Benfica and Rangers (due to the strict British rules involving non-EU players), he signed with Portuguese side Porto, where with help from players such as Zlatko Zahovič, Sérgio Conceição and Ljubinko Drulović, he was the top goalscorer in Europe for three years (1998–99, 1999–00, 2001–02), with a goal average of slightly over one goal per match (129 goals in 125 matches for an average of 1.03 per match). Although he was top scorer three times, due to the use of coefficients based on each European league's standards, he only won twice, the 1998–99 and 2001–02 European Golden Boots. He lost out to Kevin Phillips in 1999–2000 despite Phillips having scored six fewer goals than Jardel. In a 2014 interview, Jardel revealed that, during his spell at Porto, he consumed cocaine with the knowledge of both the club's doctor and physiotherapist.

Galatasaray

Mário Jardel joined Galatasaray in July 2000 from Porto for a reported fee of €17 million, brought in to replace legendary striker Hakan Şükür, who had transferred to Inter Milan…

In the 2014 general election, Jardel was elected to the Chamber of Deputies on the Brazilian Social Democratic Party ticket, with 41,000 votes. According to Brazil's Public Prosecutor's Office, Jardel and 10 other people have extorted staff, nominated fake members and diverted funds for their own benefit. The Prosecutor's Office finished the accusation in February 2016 as a result of the investigation started in 2015 (Operação Gol Contra), triggering the process to terminate Jardel's term in the Chamber of Deputies. Fellow politician Marlon Santos stated at the time that Jardel was involved in activities "which are not compatible with parliamentary ethics". Jardel was also accused by Santos of being involved in drug trafficking, with Santos stating "There is clear proof that the car allocated by the parliament has been used to drive drug dealers around". On 8 June 2016, the Parliament Ethics commission approved the request to terminate Jardel's term. The case was transferred to the Constitution and Justice Commission, who approved the case in December 2016. A final vote was held in the Parliament in December 2016 where it was unanimously decided to terminate Jardel's term.