Graham Hunter on Luis Suarez: What’s fascinating about this Pandora’s Box of a player is that the lid has been closed for months now

Posted on January 19, 2015 by SoccerCapper

By now he may be the most famous biter in the history of sport, even ahead of Mike Tyson. He’s a serial diver and he’s been convicted and banned for racist actions. Most recently there will also have been some writing him off as guilty of cynically constructing a fairytale narrative normally just be fed to the gullible and naive.

Luis Suarez and his ‘love’ for Barcelona.

At one level it fits with the guff which players have always churned out. Hence the suspicion.

Never mind the huge contract, never mind the lure of winning trophies instead of clawing for top league survival, never mind exchanging a bunch of journeymen for shiny new elite colleagues you still get …… ‘I love this club… I’ve always wanted to play for this club… I’ve got the club crest tattooed on my heart…’

You know the drill.

It’s that time. Suarez will be available for our next game. pic.twitter.com/l4gP8DYL3M — Barca Analysis (@BarcaAnalysis) October 21, 2014

As his debut for Barcelona draws closer the anecdotes have sluiced out. How he came to the Camp Nou as a fan, an impoverished 16-year-old who was captivated by the football but couldn’t afford to liberate a pair of ‘Ronaldinho’ boots until he came back again the next time with more dosh in his pocket.

How this is the club at which he wants to retire. That this is the culmination of a football love affair, at least on his part. But of course this is just another part of the walking contradiction that is Luis Suárez. Family man, consistently immensely popular with his team mates, world class footballer… occasionally no better than a street thug.

Thus, what could have just been glib phrases crafted by a PR agency turn out to be bang-on true.

Dani Alves on Luis Suárez: “He can’t wait for El Clasico. He’s ready, eager. He’s a pest.” #fcb pic.twitter.com/Ud83hXLCwm — Sam (@samuelJayC) October 15, 2014

Suárez first visited the Camp Nou when his then girlfriend, now wife, Sofia Balbi, moved with her parents to Catalunya. He’s a kid going off the rails at Nacional back in Uruguay. Sloppy and temperamental of attitude he’s not training well, drinking and, in due course, gets red carded and suspended for a physical attack on referee Luis Larranaga.

Aged 14, Nacional, his club, warned him they were about to release him, tired of his lack of focus and impatient with him “keeping bad company”.

Like Edmilson, who had a brilliant career here having been a juvenile alcoholic, the ‘last’ chance was the right one. There’s a long, brilliant, essay by Wright Thompson about those days where the writer goes to Montevideo and finds that Suárez’s part in that referee assault actually catalyzed events which led to a shooting. I urge you to take time and read it (after this piece, of course).

His redemption

However, Sofía is his redemption. But she’s half a world away. When he first visits it is the transition season, Luis Enrique scores for Barcelona in a 1-1 Clásico draw at Madrid, Ronaldinho arrives in what Ferran Soriano [now the big boss at Man City] told me was “our rock ‘n roll” signing.

The Brazilian’s first goal comes at the Camp Nou in Autumn 2003, well past midnight because a dispute between Barcelona and Sevilla means the game kicks off just after midnight. [Spain, huh?]

Ronaldinho produces a slalom run and vicious long range goal. Because it’s so late at night and the city is quiet the 90,000 roar from the Camp Nou registers a blip on the city’s earthquake seismographs. Another real street fighter, Edgar Davids, (Suárez and he share a philosophy about means and ends) will join and Frank Rijkaard’s first season will erupt into what becomes an unlikely chase for the title.

Barça’s ascent to greatness has begun again, Suarez (by fluke) is present and is seduced.

“I was 16 and on holiday to visit Sofía and so we went to the Camp Nou and although I couldn’t afford any of the gear in the club shop we went there and I had photos taken with a replica model of Ronaldinho.

“Then when I’d saved up and went back I bought my first pair of serious football boots and they were the brand which Ronaldinho wore with his name printed on them.”

Kids with Scouse accents

Eventually his move to Holland lets him reunite with the love of his life. Now he and Sofía have kids. With Scouse accents.

“If you’ve someone beside you in life to support, guide and help you it bears fruit. My wife’s the one who makes me follow the correct path. Even if I score four in a game when I come home I’m a dad and a husband first: not ‘Luis Suárez’.”

Over the years, when Sofía and he visited her parents he’d take in a Barcelona match at the Camp Nou, incognito, and thus he swears the desire he feels to be here, to debut against Madrid not only because he’s desperate for redemption but to make Barça soar, is genuine. Not manufactured.

So we finally found a Suarez pic that hasn’t been photoshopped… #WorldCup #ITAURU pic.twitter.com/ntnY7BxLYF — Sportsbet.com.au (@sportsbetcomau) June 25, 2014

Indeed he claims that when news reached him via his agent, Pep Guardiola’s brother Pere, that the transfer would still take place he cried in relief that Barça hadn’t backed away from the deal after THAT bite on Chiellini.

“I thought I’d ruined my career.”

It’s all stuff the fans will love. At base level it just happens to be true.

“I’m at the club I always wanted to play for and If I could do well enough to retire here it’d make my career perfect,” he’s said since arriving.

Heard it before, of course.

Fat chance of a debut

Suárez’s fellow ex-Ajax alumnus, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, clawed and dragged his way to Barcelona out of love for the Guardiola playing style.

When I interviewed the Swede at the Barcelona training ground he talked of his adoration for this football school. That he wanted to submerge himself in the system and culture of the brand of football people would still be writing about, enjoying and trying to teach in 20 or 30 years. Remember how that one worked out?

What’s fascinating about this Pandora’s Box of a player is that the lid has been closed for months now. We’ve seen glimpses – goals against Oman, forcing an Saudi Arabian own goal in the friendly against Uruguay, and a couple for Barça B against an Indonesian youth select mean that he’s now scored 35 times in his last 38 club and international matches.

But his rehabilitation as a player (“When I came on in the Gamper presentation match for Barcelona I didn’t feel like their player, it was like I was just a guest”) has largely been done in secret. Closed doors training.

Luis Enrique’s ‘he’s NOT fat!’ outburst a few days ago stems from the images of the Indonesia U19 match, beamed around the world on Barça TV, which certainly didn’t show the Uruguayan at his leanest.

But given how often managers talk about players getting the last part of their fitness from playing, not training, perhaps that’s not wholly surprising. Certainly he looks more svelte now.

El Clasico Madrid 2015

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His fellow players have been knocked out by his training. Hold on …no NOT by punches!

Gerard Piqué marveled, the other day, at Suárez’s incredible ability to make the ball fall to his feet time and time again when players tackle him, seem to have the ball but, somehow, it ends up in him winning three consecutive rebounds off defender’s boots or shins and a goal-bound shot.

For his part the striker says: “You see the matches and you know their quality but when you train with Xavi and Iniesta and Messi you see them making passes which you think are totally impossible and when they pull them off it stops you in your tracks.”

There’s also been teasing. Oh yes.

“Don’t bite me…!” has laughingly been thrown at him if a defender wins a challenge in training. Incident free so far.

Garnier advert. #Sofia #Suárez pic.twitter.com/2RCtzTyEn8 — Fiaz Hamsath (@fiazhamsath) October 17, 2014

But Suárez admits that he “can feel the anxiety, the impatience to help the team and to demonstrate my worth to the coach, rising” as the D-Day approaches.

Whether that’s a factor which Luis Enrique needs to take into account – ie Suárez sitting on the bench getting more and more uptight in a Clásico and liable to unleash his adrenaline in an inadvisable way or beginning the match having built up to it knowing he’s playing – is up to Lucho. A big judgement call.

What’s clear is that whether behind every great striker there’s a great woman, there needs to be one to counsel, guide and calm this one.

Maybe Barcelona should put Sofía on a consultancy wage, just to ensure that their prickly, unpredictable new striker stays on the right path.

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Graham Hunter: What Arsenal fans should know about Alexis Sánchez and what Luis Suarez brings to Barca

Posted on July 11, 2014 by SoccerCapper

It all comes down to choices in the end.

Alexis Sánchez admitted to me the last time I interviewed him that his decision making when on the ball was still the part of his game which he most needed to improve.

Luis Suárez needs to choose to stop biting people. Or abusing them racially.

If each can fine-tune the synapses which have led them down the wrong road in the past then spectacular new chapters await them.

I’ve nailed my colours to the mast about each man in the past but, for those who have renewed interest because Alexis is now a Gooner and Suárez (above) with Barça.

Here goes…

There has been a tidal wave of appreciation for the Chilean since he scored that howitzer of a goal on the last day of the Spanish season – one which both looked improbable and, briefly, like it would Barcelona the title.

Alexis had a powerful World Cup, one which has naturally raised appreciation and expectation, but via performances which aren’t archetypical of his time at Barcelona.

What links him and Suárez, one of few things I think, is his infernal work attitude.

Playing against him can be a nightmare. In terms of his determination to press and win back possession you could compare him to an energetic puppy chasing a tennis ball. Non-stop, determined, agile, rapid – often successful in his task.

Even though he’s wealthy now (he funnels a lot of money back into helping the Tocopilla community in which he grew up) Sanchez (above) admitted to me there were times when the family had to choose between buying food or either boots or a football for him.

Times were hard and he’s never lost that drive to succeed. He’d tell his mum that he was going to be a world-famous footballer and that he’d earn enough money for her to never have to work again and she’d laugh. And indulge him. And now look at him.

That same abundance of pace and energy lets him ‘show’ for run after run which will allow the passers in Arsenal’s midfield, Ramsey, Wilshire and Özil in particular, many more options about what to dow the ball in the two or three seconds after they receive it.

Some of his goals, notably that one against Atlético Madrid or the winner in last season’s Camp Nou Clásico, when he chipped Diego López after running from midfield, indicate that he’s got some truly spectacular finishes in his locker.

Yet while I’ve no wish to pour cold water on the bubbling excitement of Arsenal fans who presumably feel that Alexis could be a key element in finally winning the Premier League again, this is an incomplete player.

The Alexis who scored at Wembley to defeat England, who led Chile’s fightback against Brazil at the World Cup – this is not the identical forward who’s been at the Camp Nou for the last three years.

For Chile he was a leader…

When he arrived he was daunted by the big club atmosphere, by playing with Messi, by the insane media attention which Barcelona generates.

His play showed it. He’d score unfeasibly difficult goals and miss unfeasible numbers of run-of-the-mill chances.

He’d have a game where his understanding with Cesc would look like some form of footballing E.S.P and many more when he’d make wrong choices, go down blind alleys – allow energy to get the better of intelligence.

For Chile he’s a leader up front – his decisions take precedence over those around him, his runs are fed with passes, he’s the lone wolf. That suits him.

For Barcelona, less so…

At Barcelona Alexis constantly wrestled with the concept of whether he was supposed to be a lead actor pushing for the Oscar or simply the ‘best supporting’ guy. In each of his seasons he could, and should, have had nine or ten more goals and I have always believed that with the rise in importance of Alexis at Barcelona their absolute cutting edge in the biggest of games (Stamford Bridge in 2012 would be an example) has decreased.

My hope is that this World Cup, increasing personal and football maturity, plus the range of terrific passers around him paves the way for Arsenal fans to enjoy Alexis more than I’ve enjoyed him while playing in La Liga.

Suarez is a different beast…

Suárez is obviously different. His ruthlessness is patently a stand-out characteristic – constantly battling with his technique and football intelligence for pre-eminence in that strangely-wired brain of his.

His footballing fit at Barcelona is, you’d say, still clearer than that of Alexis at Arsenal.

Suárez brings precisely the intensity, the will-to-win which Pep Guardiola saw waning as far back as spring 2012 when he chose to leave.

The Uruguayan’s goal record doesn’t stand comparison with that of Messi, he’s no more skilled than Messi, Iniesta, Xavi or Neymar for example – but he brings a ferocity, an all-out dedication to winning every ball, ever match, every trophy which seems unabated.

Carlo Ancelotti840

Carlo deals with talent ‘overload’

Over the last three years he’s won two trophies, the League Cup and the Copa America, and this isn’t commensurate either with his ability or with the lava-hot moment of form which he’s in.

This is, principally, what Barcelona have bought. Right now the Catalan media is toeing the party lines.

They are whipping up support for the idea that Suárez’s ban is unfair, they are playing on the fact that Barcelona fans love to see players who will sweat blood for the jersey – there’s next to no questioning about whether this man’s behaviour over the last few years merits this club investing so much money in him.

Coincidentally, it’s probably Real Madrid who have done most to show that the problem of fitting an ‘overload’ of talent into an already star-laden team can be dealt with.

Carlo Ancelotti didn’t have a voice in the signing of Gareth Bale and tinkered with formations for weeks and weeks before finally moving Ángel Di Maria back to midfield and using Bale, Benzema and Cristiano Ronaldo in a front three for much of the rest of the season while Madrid won the Copa Del Rey and Champions League.

It won’t necessarily be simple to fit Leo Messi, Neymar and Suárez together – but there are ways. Messi, for example, could easily play at no10 in a 4-2-3-1 which, hypothetically, could look like Bravo: Alves, Piqué, Bartra, Alba; Mascherano, Busquets; Iniesta, Messi, Neymar; Suárez.

How will Barcelona play with Suarez?

Perhaps Luis Enrique will simply ask Messi and Neymar to play wide right and left with Suárez down the middle – he’s got the cojones to front up to his super-star players and tell them the ‘way it’s going to be’.

But enforcing it and making it succeed are two different things.

Quite how Barcelona have gone from a club trying to breath real life into its motto ‘Més que un Club’ and fielding teams which were largely home grown, unified in ethos and exemplified by the behaviour of Carles Puyol when he insisted that his cancer-surviving team mate Eric Abidal raise the Champions League trophy in his place to hiring a serial biter is a little depressing.

But once Suárez serves his ban it’s time for a new leaf and a new start.

Then, in light of the decisions Alexis and Suárez begin to make on and off the pitch, it’ll be clearer where the winners and losers in these deals, from Barcelona, Liverpool, Arsenal, La Liga and the Premier League may be.

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