An adevrtisment featuring Luis Suarez at Copacabana beach in Rio de Janeiro. Source: AFP
RARE are the days when the wisdom of FIFA is applauded, so count the banishment of Luis Suarez as another triumph for the best World Cup anyone can remember.
In a tournament in which the great players, led by Lionel Messi and Neymar, are joyously lighting up the planet, it is appropriate to dispatch Suarez with the ridicule he deserves.
Forced to endure the indignity of being turfed out of the Uruguay team hotel and reportedly heading for a plane to Montevideo yesterday, Suarez leaves with the memory of his own self-defeating idiocy and a fairly harmless, almost amusing, scandal to add to Brazil’s cocktail of excitement.
Harmless? Amusing? Well, let’s not waste time with anger. Suarez’s bites do not inflict great pain or threaten careers. They should not provoke rage, but utter bafflement and mockery (Twitter has excelled in the past 72 hours), although FIFA was entirely correct in imposing a four-month ban. The punishment is unlikely to change Suarez’s behaviour. If anything, it will only increase his sense of persecution, perhaps making him more unstable in future.
FIFA had to act to show what will not be tolerated because, elsewhere, talent this rare — or medium rare, as the cannibal joke goes — will always be indulged.
Suarez has lost the chance to shape this World Cup, as he did so explosively against England. Pending appeals, perhaps even court cases, he must accept the humiliation of being banished from football stadiums until November.
Yet we are left with the certainty that he will always find a soft landing, because talent that special always does in football. To have bitten once is troubling; twice inexplicable; a third time should be career suicide, but there remains an expectation that, even after this scandal, Barcelona could yet push through the transfer he covets.
The outcry gives Suarez the excuse to agitate for a move away from England, and it may help the Catalans by giving them the chance to haggle with Liverpool over the fee. Goalscorers of his quality are in sufficiently short supply that we must not be surprised if, in the next few months, Suarez still becomes the third-most expensive player in the history of the sport.
If that deal is done, Suarez will climb aboard a private jet, walk down a red carpet in Catalonia and sign a contract that surpasses even his present £200,000 ($361,400) a week at Anfield. He will be feted as the new, stellar teammate of Messi and Neymar, fawned over by new employers and supporters. This is how it is for the elite footballers, even when they are guilty of racism and/or violence.
The Merseyside club has done well out of the striker in the past 12 months, but it was impossible not to feel a little sympathy for those who have worked hard to keep Suarez on the straight and narrow. They laid on the services of Steve Peters, the sports psychiatrist. Brendan Rodgers, the manager, strived to keep his best player focused. There was optimistic talk of redemption. Rodgers will reflect with mortification on the speech he made when collecting the Footballer of the Year trophy on Suarez’s behalf in May.
“What people don’t see is that he is a very intelligent man,” Rodgers told us. “I know for however long I am at Liverpool, whenever I leave I will have become a better manager and better person because of Luis Suarez and for that I thank him so much.”
Now it is time for Liverpool to cut him loose and allow Barcelona to take a risk on a player who, by the end of the FIFA ban, will have missed around 40 matches through three suspensions for biting. It is an extraordinary crime-sheet, but let us wave Suarez out of the tournament with a bemused chuckle and resume our seats in front of the compelling action. No Suarez? That’s his loss, not ours.
source: theaustralian.com.au
STUDIO 3 NEWCASTLE AUSTRALIA 