Weekend Argus (Saturday Edition)
Morning and a chat with Suarez tea
He loved Liverpool but he’s Barca crazy now
IT’S 10.30am at Barcelona’s training ground this past Wednesday and Luis Suarez has brought his morning flask of tea – Uruguayan tea, “mate” – with him into the press room.
It’s his daily breakfast of champions, or more aptly this morning the breakfast of “nearly champions”, because Barca still need three more points to win La Liga. They will probably get them tonight at home to Levante.
Suarez has only had five hours sleep after the team returned in the early hours on Wednesday from a 9.30pm kick-off the night before in their 2-0 La Liga win over Alavés.
But he’s ready to talk Liverpool, who his Barca team face in the Champions League semi-finals next week, Lionel Messi and how, for someone who gets called “fat” and “slow” at the start of every season, he’s done okay as Barcelona’s No 9.
The Champions League is the club’s primary mission. Messi announced it as such in August at a pre-season friendly. Did Suarez know his captain was going to promise supporters to bring “that beautiful cup” back to the Nou Camp? “No, I didn’t know,” he says. “And we joked with him afterwards: ‘You said it, so you had better make it happen!’”
It hasn’t all been left to Messi. A Suarez header set Barcelona on their way against Manchester United although Uefa decided it was Luke Shaw’s own-goal.
“I’m counting it,” Suarez laughs. “For all that it took a deflection it was going in at the far post anyway. As far as I’m concerned, it’s mine.”
He understands it was a goal many Liverpool supporters would have enjoyed. “An ex-Liverpool player scoring at Old Trafford and then we knock them out,” he says. “Obviously, they are going to be happy but maybe not so happy now they have to play us.”
Looking ahead to the second leg, he says it will be both “strange and wonderful” to go back to Anfield where he has not played competitively since he left in 2014. “I’ve been lucky to take great memories from all the clubs I have played for. Playing for my home club Nacional in Uruguay got me a move to Europe. I developed a lot as a player at Ajax and that helped me take the next step into the elite, which was playing for Liverpool.
“And at Liverpool I was
able
to consolidate as a player on the world stage. Liverpool made me realise that I could keep improving as a player, keep growing, and I’m grateful for all that and for what I shared with my children there too.”
They don’t usually go to Champions League games but this is different, he says. “I was talking to [my wife] Sofi about going to Anfield and the children said, ‘And we’re going too.’ So, we will all go, maybe not the youngest, Lauti, who is just six months old.”
Suarez’s son Benjamin, who will turn six this year, has already shown signs of promise as a player. According to his dad he’s even inherited his father’s ability to block off defenders by turning his backside into them.
“He was very young when I was at Liverpool but he knows the first stadium I took him to was Anfield,” Suarez says proudly.
“And his sister Delfina (an anagram of Anfield) – a part of her childhood is there. When she first started to get excited about football, it was there. She remembers them singing ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ so imagine what this means for her.”
He says he will seek out club liaison officer Ray Haughton and he wants Delfina to see the canteen staff who used to take care of her when she went to work with her dad.
To say it went well for Suarez after Liverpool would be an understatement. This will be his fourth title, he has three Spanish Cups and a Champions League, and in La Liga he is the club’s third all-time top scorer.
“I have won a lot of trophies – maybe more than I would have expected – but it goes with the territory when playing for this club. And Barcelona’s third highest scorer in La Liga – imagine that, with all the great players that have passed through this club. I think I have produced the goods. I think I have been worthy of this club’s No 9 shirt.”
There has still been criticism at times. Thanks to Uefa giving that goal to Shaw he still hasn’t scored away from home in the Champions League since 2015.
“That doesn’t keep me awake at night. I know I’m the only player in Europe who has been able to get anywhere near Messi and [Cristiano] Ronaldo in the race for the Golden Shoe in the last five years,” he says. “And twice I won it.”
There are also doubts cast at the start of every season. People say he looks a bit slow, a little bit …”Fat!” he interrupts, smiling.
“They say everything. I laugh at it. You have to learn how to live with the criticism. Here, you go a couple of bad games and it’s: ‘Oh, a bad run.’ They are the demands here.”
He’s looked at home at the club from day one – knowing his place without shrinking into Messi’s shadow.
“When I came here, I knew that I had Neymar on one side and Leo on the other and that I had to do, let’s say, the dirty work,” he says.
“I was there to occupy the two centre backs. I would make a move into space, one centre back would not know what to do and the other one would follow me and they [Messi and Neymar] were left one-on-one. And in one-on-ones they’re the best.”
When Suarez arrived at Barcelona, he formed a lethal three-man attack with Messi and Neymar
Suarez has been team-mates with Messi for years but is still amazed by what he can produce
Familiarity has taken away none of the wonderment he has when talking about Messi. “Sometimes I set off running with my head down and the ball just appears there at my feet and I think: how did he put it there? How did he know that I would end up there?
“Or I’ll be waiting to receive the ball with my back to goal and there are three players between us and I think: I’ll move because how’s he going to get it to me here?
“And he does get it through only now I’m not there. I’ve moved because foolishly I doubted he could find me. There are thousands of moments like that.”
Are they the best partnership in the club’s history? The goal stats certainly say so. “Well I don’t know,” Suarez says. “I know we are good teammates and friends. I think you have to be as natural as possible when you join a new club, let the relationship flow and every day you get to know each other that little bit more.
“There was always a mutual respect. We respected what our roles were, our ways of playing, our personalities and that means that we get on spectacularly well.”
What will football be like when Messi retires? There’s a long silence broken eventually by a gulp of tea.
“It will be difficult,” he says. “But the nice thing for all of us working in football right now is that we’re here experiencing it and enjoying it.”
Liverpool still means a lot to him but there will be no refusal to celebrate should he score when he faces his former side. “I am massively grateful to Liverpool for all they gave me but, you know me, once I’m on the pitch there will be no friendships, no companions. I’ll defend the colours of Barcelona with all the pride in the world.” |