By Andrew Warshaw
Ocotber 27 – His ban for biting may be over and last weekend’s Barcelona debut may have been incident-free but the infamy Luis Suarez brought on himself at the World Cup continues to generate widespread fascination.
In a new book the Uruguayan striker, who was suspended for four months for biting Italy defender Giorgio Chiellini – the third time he had bitten an opponent after assaults on PSV Eindhoven’s Otman Bakkal while playing for Ajax in 2010, and then Chelsea’s Branislav Ivanovic when he was a Liverpool player in 2013 – provides an intriguing insight into his behaviour and suggests biting can sometimes actually be “relatively harmless” compared to other serious offences.
“I had let people down,” admitted the former Liverpool striker. “I couldn’t look at my team-mates. I didn’t know how I could say sorry to them.”
Suarez nevertheless strongly believes the length of his sentence imposed by FIFA was unjust and that he was an easy target.
“Had the ban stopped at nine Uruguay matches, I would have understood it. But banning me from playing for Liverpool, when my bans in England never prevented me from playing for Uruguay? Banning me from all stadiums worldwide? Telling me I couldn’t go to work? Stopping me from even jogging around the perimeter of a football pitch? It still seems incredible to me that, until the Court of Arbitration for Sport decreed otherwise, FIFA’s power actually went that far.
“They (FIFA) had never banned a player like that before for breaking someone’s leg or smashing someone’s nose across his face …They made a big thing of saying the incident had happened “before the eyes of the world”. Zinedine Zidane headbutted Marco Materazzi in World Cup final in 2006 and got a three-match ban.
“I was an easy target, maybe. But there was something important I had to face up to: I had made myself an easy target. I made the mistake. It was my fault. This was the third time it had happened. I needed help.”
Suarez remains adamant that players should be punished just as heavily for the likes of leg-breaking tackles and headbutts which result in injuries that are generally worse. He says English football is not as clean as it likes to think it is but accepts the gravity of what he did.
“After my 10-match ban in 2013 for biting Branislav Ivanovic, I had questioned the double standards and how the fact that no one actually gets hurt is never taken into consideration.
“The damage to the player is incomparable with that suffered by a horrendous challenge. Sometimes English football takes pride in having the lowest yellow-card count in Europe, but of course it will have if you can take someone’s leg off and still not be booked. When they can say it is the league with the fewest career-threatening tackles, then it will be something to be proud of.”
“I know biting appeals (to) a lot of people, but it’s relatively harmless. Or at least it was in the incidents I was involved in. When Ivanovic rolled up his sleeve to show the referee the mark at Anfield, there was virtually nothing there… But none of this makes it right.”
“The adrenaline levels in a game can be so high; the pulse is racing and sometimes the brain doesn’t keep up. The pressure mounts and there is no release valve.”
Separately, in a interview with The Guardian newspaper’s weekend supplement, Suarez said he was trying his utmost to learn from his mistakes yet still appeared to be somewhat resentful.
“It is like an impulse, like a reaction. I believe I am on the right path now, dealing with the people who can help me, the right kind of people. There are other players who react by breaking someone’s leg, or smashing someone’s nose across their face. What happened with Chiellini is seen as worse. (But) I understand why biting is seen so badly.”
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