Daniel Jarque: An Untimely Death

Part one of the 2009–2010 La Liga sea­son pre­view will be out in the next cou­ple of days, but today is devoted to Daniel Jar­que González, who trag­i­cally passed away at the age of twenty-six while his RCD Espanyol team and he were on their pre­sea­son tour of Italy.  Accord­ing to the RCD Espanyol web­site, “Tragedy struck Espanyol and the fam­ily of Dani Jar­que this evening.  The blan­quiblau player died of car­diac arrest.”

“The doc­tor car­ried out CPR on the player and used a defib­ril­la­tor which showed that the arrest was non-responsive.  The med­ical ser­vices con­tin­ued car­ry­ing out CPR, admin­is­ter­ing adren­a­line and atropine for an hour, but the player’s heart did not react, so finally that deter­mined his death.”

“RCD Espanyol, bro­ken with pain, wish to put them­selves at the absolute dis­po­si­tion of the fam­ily of our cap­tain Dani Jar­que, to whom go our warmest thoughts.”

When any death like this occurs, rival­ries are set aside, and every­one grieves for the deceased and his fam­ily.  From San Fran­cisco, where FC Barcelona is on their Amer­i­can pre­sea­son tour, Joan Laporta said on the Barcelona club web­site, “We are filled with extreme dis­may at this tragic event which we deeply regret.”

“Today we are all in mourn­ing.  I want to send, on behalf of FC Barcelona, our deep­est sym­pa­thies to RCD Espanyol for the painful loss of their cap­tain Dani Jar­que, and to his family.”

A rock in cen­tral defense with Nicolás Pareja, they led Espanyol from the bot­tom of the table as late as Round 30 and from rel­e­ga­tion as late as Round 32 to tenth place, an aston­ish­ing turn­around to a top half fin­ish.  A proud player of the Espanyol can­tera since the age of twelve, Daniel Jar­que reached the high­est peak indi­vid­u­ally when his native Espanyol asked him to be cap­tain one short month ago.  He then cap­tained the first match in their newly built sta­dium, the Estadi Cornellà-El Prat, where they impressed the home sup­port­ers with a 3–0 thrash­ing of Liv­er­pool FC.

This kind of cat­a­strophic event reminds peo­ple of their own mor­tal­ity and how life can be taken away in an instant, even if you are only twenty-six years old, in top phys­i­cal shape, and seem­ingly at a good place in your life.  No one truly knows why these events occur, and surely, Jarque’s team­mates are ask­ing the same ques­tions.  If any­one knows through what they are going, it is the play­ers of Sevilla in the 2007–2008 cam­paign because their team­mate Anto­nio Puerta died shortly after he played in the first match of that sea­son.  Sevilla fin­ished fifth that sea­son, nar­rowly miss­ing a Cham­pi­ons League spot because while they had the same total of points as Atlético Madrid, Atlético Madrid had the bet­ter head-to-head record against Sevilla.

While it is a noble idea to sug­gest that Dani Jarque’s death will spur on Los Perequitos to play their best foot­ball ever, the truth is that each player will take his death in his own pri­vate way.  If they can envelop the spirit of Dani Jar­que and, as the untimely, yet apt and appro­pri­ate cliché goes, play as if their lives depended on it, they will honor their fallen friend in the most respectable way possible.

Rest in peace, Dani.  The foot­ball world will sorely miss you.

Tagged as: antonio puerta, barcelona, Daniel Jarque, espanyol, Nicolas Pareja, sevilla