By Andrew Warshaw
July 2 – Barcelona have seemingly upped the stakes in their bid to sign shamed Uruguayan forward Luis Suarez with Barca’s sporting director Andoni Zubizarreta (pictuded) praising Suarez for his public apology for his bite on Italy’s Giorgio Chiellini at the World Cup,
The fact that Suarez has been banned from all footballing activities for four months by FIFA has not deterred Barca from trying to buy him from Liverpool.
Suárez, who initially denied biting Chiellini, apologised to the Italy defender via social media on Monday. “Suárez has shown he is humble enough to admit an error, which is very important,” says Zubizarreta. “He has been humble enough to apologise to those he has affected, because it happened in the middle of a festival of football. In this case it’s the best thing a person can do.”
“Everyone knows that Luis is an excellent player, everyone knows last season he played in various positions in attack, but everyone also knows that he is a Liverpool player.”
Zubizarreta was speaking at the presentation of Barcelona’s latest signing Ivan Rakitic who also praised Suárez. “The fact he has had the character and the strength to go in front of everyone and say sorry says a lot about him as a person,” said the Croatian international.
Liverpool chief executive Ian Ayre is reported to be meeting Barcelona officials in London today for preliminary talks over the £80 million sale of Suarez, with the acquisition of Chile’s brilliant forward Alexis Sanchez as part of the deal.
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