Love Story

Another La Liga round, another Real win. Not just any win, as it happens, since they overcame Barca 3-1 despite going a goal down early on in the piece. The combined worth of Madrid’s first team must run into hundreds of millions (with only Casillas a product of their youth system), so it's somehow fitting that they’re shooting the lights out on the field. After all there’s few things more embarrassing than a publically known waste of a mountain of money (just ask QPR's owners).

 

In recent years the Clásico has risen in prominence to become the world’s biggest clash in club football. A mere look at Real Madrid reveals a mouth-watering array of talent drawn from the English Premier League, German Bundesliga and French Ligue 1 (no chance of snatching up any Italian Serie A talent these days, what with PSG constantly sniffing around it).

 

There can be few games more enticing than the clash between the Spanish giants, who had in recent years rendered La Liga the equivalent of a boring two-horse race reminiscent of recent Scottish Premier League seasons. Thankfully Atletico Madrid somehow found the cojones to upset the apple cart last season, before their wonderful team ended up being picked apart. The Clásico is an encounter that never disappoints, and this latest clash was no different. Slick passing and sublime goals, a hotly contested refereeing decision and plenty of swagger and skill all over the pitch.

 

Indeed there wasn’t much wrong with the game except that it lacked a pinch of its usual controversy. Never mind Cristiano Ronaldo’s trademark foppish goal celebration which has come to be expected. There he was, after jinking his penalty kick past Bravo, wheeling away to engage in a pathetic pirouette before screaming with slightly parted arms. Best player in the world though he may be, he remains a juvenile high schooler who totally fancies himself. So wouldn’t it have been fitting if a certain someone had crept up behind the Portuguese and taken a big wet bite out of his  shoulder?!

 

 

 

 

But before we go there let’s revisit heavy metal legend John Michael ‘Ozzy’ Osbourne's chequered past. After signing a record deal with CBS his wife and agent Sharon suggested that he take two doves with him into their offices, to charm the executives who were not overly keen on him. Gasps of wonder were heard from the suited corporate types when he walked towards them and whisked a dove from his pocket.

 

Ozzy held up the bird and drew it closely towards his face. And as the executives surrounding him smiled on warmly, he proceeded to put the bird’s head in his mouth and bite it off.

 

The rest, as they say, is history. It was an act so vile that the media railed against it all over the world. It was an act so vile that it propelled Ozzy into superstardom, as his career roared skywards like a rocket.

 

For there is no such thing as bad publicity.

 

 

 

 

A bite of Bakkal, a hickie for Ivanovic and a taste of Chiellini have probably left Luis Suarez in little doubt of this. No other player’s misdemeanours on the pitch have attracted as much attention in recent years, with the pint-sized Uruguayan constantly finding himself in the dock of public opinion, and a household name as a result. And he was barely about to make his return with Barcelona against Real Madrid, that already the media was choked with stories about his previous misdeeds, with apologists and accusers emerging from the shadows to give their two bobs’ worth about the infamous handball, biting and that racial slur.

 

Seriously how tedious can some journalists get, to still be stirring the same soup months later? Although I guess it’s better than reporting the countless ‘tweets’ of navel-gazing planks like QPR players Joey Barton and Rio Ferdinand. I’m not seeking to condone any acts of violence or denigration committed by Luis Suarez. But hasn’t the whole moral crusade against him already run its course?

 

The way people carry on about it, you’d think Luis was the first player to ever engage in unsporting conduct on the pitch. Never mind Maradona’s handballs, or that Cantona half killed a Crystal Palace fan during his pomp at Manchester United. Or that Roy Keane took out a player’s knee intentionally and then even had the gall to gloat about it in his autobiography (gosh that’s two Manchester United players isn’t it?)

 

Like I said, I’m not trying to defend anything bad that Suarez has done. Nor am I objecting to the hefty penalties he has received, and which were in my view fully deserved.

 

 

 

 

But it is funny how we all want great players to leave it all on the pitch, then squeal in protest whenever a bit of their passion boils over. It’s easy to slam players whenever the red mist descends on them, yet where does the average fan think an unflinching will to win comes from? A place of inner peace and serenity? Or a cushy, comfortable background?

Let’s face it, most South American footballers lead pretty crap lives, unless football takes them anywhere better (and that’s often not the case). Suarez may have had it rougher than most, finding himself one of seven kids without a dad, after his father abandoned his family to be raised by a single mother on less than nothing.

Talk about being attention deprived! He was by all accounts an introverted kid brought up on mean streets, with probably only a football for a friend.

They say that some of the best players are pretty useless in training, and England keeper Joe Hart recently confirmed that about Sergio Aguero, his Argentinean team mate at Manchester City. It’s also true that during the constant ‘nature versus nurture’ debates, many of the world’s best sports coaches have often declared that the added few percentiles of match-winning performance cannot be coached, since it only emerges from certain individuals during the 'heat of battle'.

 

 

 

This was certainly true of the young Suarez, whose sheer abundance of talent was such that he even survived a wayward period spent distracted from from the game, in which he almost gave up football at 14. He was only kept on at Nacional because of the previous glimpses of his sheer natural ability. But when he did rediscover his love for the game, he wowed his coaches with his sudden appetite for it and with his renewed will to win.

Because for all the bad headlines he has attracted, many often overlook the fact that Suarez’s life has been one big love story that would make an incredible movie. And we're not just talking ball. His return to Nacional was down to the woman of his dreams, who became a soul mate he could turn to, and who helped him stray from bad company long enough to realise his amazing talent.

 

Sofia Balbi sorted his head out after he had (understandably) flirted with the life of a tearaway. But life, like football, can be cruel. The only person who understood the young Suarez was ripped away from him to rejoin her family in (believe it or not) Barcelona. It was a bitter loss for Suarez, who found himself devastated once more, just like he had been when his father walked out on him.

 

For the young Luis had no means that would allow him to be reunited with her, and all he was left with was a pitch and a ball. Yet so resolved was he to join his heartthrob that he dived headlong once more into his first love, training with such intensity that he was known to weep in the showers after games that his team had won, simply because he had not made it onto the scoresheet.

 

 

 

 

He knew he had to resort to anything to win, because in football - like life - winning is all, and he more reason than most to succeed. Little did Uruguay suspect that the heartbroken dropout from a broken family was on his way to returning the Celeste to the semi finals of a World Cup, which they had not graced for thirty years. He would also proceed to help secure the Copa America for them again, and go on to be their greatest star since Enzo ‘Le Prince’ Francescoli (Zinedine Zidane’s greatest idol).

 

Eventually Luis’s goals secured him a move to Europe. Yet further sacrifices lay ahead as he commenced his European career in the Dutch fields of Groningen (a name so painful to utter it makes one think of Godzilla stuffing cars into his mouth and chewing them whole). He had been reunited with his old flame Sofia, but was also mindful that he had to secure a future with her. This rendered his will to win undiminished, and he resorted to everything to achieve it.

 

He was transferred to Ajax the following season, where he was eventually made captain at the age of 23, and proclaimed heir to Dalglish at Liverpool before he even hit 27. His commitment to the game is unquestioned, as he fights and scraps for every last ball. Shame then, that his obsession with winning at times bubbles over horribly. Perhaps a side-effect of countless years spent retaliating against bully boys twice his size on the mean streets of Salto and Montevideo? Which most likely often got him thrashed afterwards? We may never know.

 

What is certain is that his unbending instinct to fight in any which way is partly what makes him a sheer joy to watch. And his unrelenting will to win makes his absence from the pitch hard to bear for all true lovers of the game. Which is why seeing him step out with the Blaugrana last week felt like his ban had been lifted from the whole football world, and not just from Luis himself!

Watching him play is just a sheer joy. His tenacity is relentless, and work rate second to absolutely no other player I’ve seen. His incredible comebacks from injury and disciplinary bans make a mockery of the term ‘match fitness’. Furthermore the beauty of some of his goals are only eclipsed by the efforts of fellow ‘bad boy’ Zlatan Ibrahimovic.

 

It really is time for the press to move on, for I think that Luis deserves another chance. I am quite convinced that in Spain he will finally find a home away from home, since all South American stars seem to regain composure once they move from a northern European country to a Southern European one.

 

Take Carlos Tevez. Constant tantrums and hare-brained rants to the press during his time in England, yet not a peep of mischief out of him ever since he joined Juventus. Carlitos now looks like the footballer we never thought he was, fully committed to battle for his club and ebullient about everything to do with the bianconeri who are the absolute love of his life. 

 

And I suspect that this will now be the case with Luis and Barcelona. In his recent autobiography he declared how grateful he was to Brendan Rodgers for introducing tiki-taka to Merseyside, since playing the ball on the ground allowed Suarez to get the better of hulking defenders. So he cannot but flourish in the church of pass and move, and wasted no time in providing an assist during his first Clásico, with the delicious pass he served to Neymar who opened the scoring.

 

 

 

 

With Luis on the pitch his team are always in with a chance, and his introduction to a struggling Barcelona side may not have happened at a better time. It is amazing how the greater the penalties thrust upon him for misconduct, the more he returns with a vengeance to remind the world that he’s not just about bad headlines.

 

Which bad headlines, incidentally, have probably done more to enhance his brand and put Uruguay on the map than any strategy the best marketing teams could have dreamed up. Indeed there’s no such thing as bad publicity, and the constant mention of Luis’s omission from the shortlist is already eclipsing the achievements of all of the nominees called up for the ballon d’or.

 

Once more FIFA seem to have forgotten that omitting Luis only serves to further boost his following, as well as heap more fuel on a fire that will consume all before it. Because Luis is all about doing whatever it takes for love, and greater adversity only seems to further boost his resolve. Last Sunday’s defeat to Real Madrid would have rankled greatly with him, and although he might not yet bite anyone, we can soon expect a goal or two in anger.

 

Which is why I don’t envy poor Celta Vigo, having to travel to the Camp Nou this Saturday to take on Suarez and co. Sometimes true love really can hurt.