Luis Suarez undoubtedly constitutes among the most compelling figures currently operating at the elite-level of international sport. The Uruguayan striker has lit-up the English Premier League since joining Liverpool from Ajax Amsterdam in January 2011 for a fee in excess of €26 million. Suarez has netted 69 times in 110 games for the Merseyside club to date and during the previous Premier League campaign he almost single handedly drove Liverpool to a first league title in fifteen years, scoring 31 goals in 33 league appearances.
The numbers are phenomenal and Suarez’s strike rate this season earned him a share of the European Golden Boot with Cristiano Ronaldo as well as a place on the shopping list of all of Europe’s most illustrious club sides.
Common logic would dictate that a player registering performances of this calibre with such remarkable consistency should be universally revered by fans, pundits, and players alike. Yet with Suarez this is not the case. And, on the evidence of his behaviour in the Estádio das Dunas, Natal, during Uruguay’s crucial World Cup Group D fixture against Italy on June 24, it will never be.
In the 79th minute of a match that Uruguay needed to win in order to progress to the Last Sixteen, Suarez placed his nation’s hopes of victory in grave jeopardy by inexplicably biting Italy and Juventus defender, Giorgio Chiellini, on the shoulder in full view of the world’s sporting media. Two minutes later Diego Godin would rise to convert a header from a corner which ensured Uruguay triumphal progression to the knock-out phases of the World Cup at Italy and England’s expense. However, the world’s printing presses were already being fired up to produce headlines of a very different tenor; headlines that Suarez had stolen for all of the wrong reasons.
This was the third occasion on which Suarez has sunk his teeth into the flesh of an opponent on a football field. The Uruguayan’s first biting incident arose in the lower profile confines of the Dutch Eredivisie in 2010 when he was banned for seven games for biting PSV Eindhoven’s Otman Bakkal. Far more controversy reined when Suarez repeated this trick in April 2013 in a televised Premier League match for Liverpool against Chelsea. On that occasion it was Branislav Ivanovic who felt the sharpness of the strikers’ incisors, and the offence was committed less than a year after Suarez received a lengthy English Football Association ban for being found guilty of racially abusing Manchester United and France defender, Patrice Evra.
The Ivanovic bite earned Suarez a ten game ban, a suspension that saw him miss the opening six games of this Premier League season. Who knows how many more goals the Uruguayan could have registered had he been present for the full quota of thirty-eight league games? And therein lays the difficulty with Luis Suarez. In spite of his incredible talent, the Uruguayan’s appeal to the sporting public is tainted by his demeanour on the pitch. It is legitimate for a footballer to play on the edge of the laws of the game (many greats have), however, biting is unacceptable conduct by any measure. After all, had Suarez assaulted Chiellini in that manner on a public street he would warrant criminal sanction, and this is his third offence.
When Suarez netted twice to eliminate England from the World Cup on June 19th we saw one of the finest talents in global sport at his magnificent best; five days later we witnessed him at his violent worst. The pending FIFA investigation and sanction (rumoured to be a 24 game ban) likely means that we won’t see him again for the duration of this tournament – a reality that is at once just and massively disappointing.