Enigmatic Suarez conquers demons
MELLOW: MERCURIAL STRIKER DOING WHAT HE DOES BEST
It was mid-2006 when scouts for Dutch club Groningen travelled to Uruguay to check out a promising young striker called Elias Figueroa. Instead, they witnessed another teenage forward play like a man possessed and score a wonder goal. Groningen signed him up on an impulse and flew him to Europe. The name? Luis Suarez.
His relentless goal-scoring took him quickly to Ajax, then Liverpool, and now Barcelona, while along the way he also became Uruguay’s all-time top scorer.
Yet the same explosive style and win-at-all-costs character that turned him into one of the world’s elite strikers also made Suarez notorious for the wrong reasons.
Most infamously, he was sent home in shame from the 2014 World Cup in Brazil for biting Italian defender Giorgio Chellini – something he had done before in a seemingly impossible-to-control, bizarre impulse.
Four years earlier, Suarez deliberately handled a goalline header against Ghana – then further offended against sportsmanship by wildly celebrating the ensuing penalty miss – to deny them what would have been Africa’s first ever World Cup semifinal.
During a brilliant but tempestuous club career, Suarez also failed to control his inner demons, facing sanctions for biting, diving, and racially abusing an opponent.
Yet in recent times, the now 31-year-old has largely avoided controversy, while also netting more than 150 goals for Barcelona.
Indeed, Surez comes to Uruguay’s World Cup quarterfinal against France today an all-together wiser and maturer, albeit lacking a bit of the spark and speed of his earlier days.
After the trauma in Brazil, coach Oscar Tabarez kept faith with Suarez, trusting he would learn, which is exactly what seems to have happened. Where once he looked up to Diego Forlan as a mentor in the Uruguay squad, now Suarez has that role.
In Russia, Uruguay have won all four games, with Suarez bagging two goals, avoiding controversy, and exuding experience.
He may not have scored in the exhilarating 2-1 defeat of Cristiano Ronaldo’s Portugal in the last-16, but it was his rasping, pinpoint cross that led to Edinson Cavani’s opener.
Having now surpassed Forlan’s six World Cup goals, Suarez is just one behind Uruguay’s top scorer at the tournament and 1950s hero, Oscar Miguez, who had eight.
If he equals or surpasses that in Russia, surely Suarez’s redemption will be complete. – Reuters