The strange thing perhaps about Luis Suárez’s autobiography is that it is away from the biting, the confrontation with Patrice Evra and all the other controversies that you will find the story that goes as close as anything to revealing the man, and how far he would be willing to go to warp the lines between right and wrong.
Suárez is in his last full season at Ajax. They are approaching the final game a point behind the leaders, FC Twente, but with a vastly superior goal difference. Ajax have a trip to NEC Nijmegen where they are widely expected to win. Except they need Twente to slip up at ninth-placed NAC Breda.
Suárez, the captain, has a plan. He is so convinced it can work he asks to see the Ajax directors, and he remembers that what he says shocks them. “No, no, no! Are you mad, Luis? Don’t mention that ever again. We don’t do that kind of thing in Holland.”
For Suárez, it was not good enough trying to influence one match. He wanted his fingerprints on the other one, too. “I had gone to speak to the directors and suggested we offer the team that had to play Twente a win bonus. ‘The players are prepared to put in the money,’ I told them. ‘Five thousand euros from each player and if NAC Breda win then we will pay them.’”
The response, he says, was “emphatic”. He sounds indignant, struggling to understand their logic, bemused that people with Ajax in their hearts could be so unimaginative. “Everyone was too relaxed for my liking,” he complains. Ajax did their bit and Suárez scored twice in a 4-1 win. Yet Twente won 2-0 and were champions. Suárez seethed in the dressing room. “I wasn’t suggesting paying anyone to lose. That would be fraud. So what was the problem?”
It is the kind of story that probably confirms what we already know – that Suárez has a different interpretation of what is acceptable, and what is not, than the common one – and it is certainly the first time I can recall a leading footballer openly admitting he would resort to financial inducements to help see off a rival team.
Most of us, I would imagine, will understand why the Ajax directors told him to forget it (just imagine the uproar if Suárez and his Liverpool team-mates had offered a bundle of cash to West Ham’s players to beat Manchester City on the final day of last season, or if he arranged a little sweetener for Real Madrid’s opponents now he is at Barcelona). Suárez is wired differently. It isn’t about etiquette or sportsmanship with him, and in a strange way maybe it is that anything-goes mentality that helps to make him such a formidable player that he also tells the story of owning a Liverpool shirt signed by Steven Gerrard with the message “the best I’ve played with”.
His book comes out on Thursday and, judging by the feedback over the past week or so, not everyone has been enamoured with the Guardian’s decision to pay for its serialisation when the subject has a proven disciplinary case for racial abuse on his record. Maybe Suárez could have softened that view with his choice of words but, realistically, that was never going to happen and there are some jarring moments in Crossing the Line (a book title that at least suggests Suárez knows he goes too far sometimes).
Suárez, you quickly learn, is surrounded by people telling him it is the rest of the world that is wrong, and not him. They do it because he is capable of moments of almost implausible brilliance such as his exquisitely delivered pass for Gerard Piqué’s goal in this week’s Supercopa de Catalunya. Yet it does leave the impression sometimes Suárez could be caught stealing flowers from a cemetery and there would still be a small army of the devoted and deluded claiming he just wanted to water them.
Remember that infamous handball against Ghana in the 2010 World Cup? Not his worst offence, by any means, but it is certainly enlightening to discover that back in Montevideo he keeps a trophy, given to him by some fans, in the style of a goalkeeper making a tremendous save, and with one word scrawled across the bottom: gracias.
Suárez’s halo is on so tight in Uruguay it is a wonder he does not permanently suffer headaches. And it is tempting to wonder if his story might be much less complicated if were there not this culture of indulgence around him.
It is certainly staggering that in 272 pages there is not a single incident when he recounts anyone properly losing their temper and telling him, the old-fashioned way, that he needs to sort himself out. His wife, Sofi, eventually blames herself for not being harder on him. But there is nothing from friends, relatives, team-mates, managers, agents or directors about his biting trilogy, the cheating (“I dive,” he says matter-of-factly, “yes, I dive”) and his occasionally strange relationship with the truth.
Suárez mentions almost in passing that at the age of 15, playing for Nacional’s youth team, he once “ran 50 metres to argue a decision, I was shown a red card so I headbutted the referee”. Yet this is the incident, you might remember, that the American sportswriter Wright Thompson tried to investigate only to discover that the people of Uruguay do not generally take kindly to foreign journalists asking impertinent questions about their hero. The records of that game had mysteriously vanished. Thompson flew to Montevideo and tried the national library, the Uruguayan football federation, referee files and various Nacional officials before meeting Romulo Martinez Chenlo, the sports editor of one newspaper, and being told the story was absolute garbage. Suárez had simply been protesting about a bad call when “he fell” into the referee, accidentally breaking his nose.
That was the excuse, you might also recall, after Giorgio Chiellini finished Italy’s World Cup game against Uruguay with teeth marks on his shoulder and Suárez sent a letter to Fifa that could easily have been dictated by Aldridge Prior from Viz: “In no way it happened how you have described, as a bite or intent to bite. I lost my balance, making my body unstable and falling on top of my opponent. At that moment I hit my face against the player, leaving a small bruise on my cheek and a strong pain in my teeth.” His confession came three weeks later. Then you open his book. The opening line, page one: “I knew straight away, as soon as it happened.”
All of which creates a problem for him when, simultaneously, he wants us to take his word, disregard the verdict of the QC who found him guilty of racially abusing Evra and discount the evidence of two experts in South American language who had helped nail down whether the Spanish use of negro in an argument, while repeatedly pinching his opponent’s skin, was offensive. Suárez once apologised for not shaking Evra’s hand. Now, he says it was a carefully laid ambush and, once again, there is almost zero self-awareness when it comes to his own record of truth-telling.
Suárez remembers sending a text to Kenny Dalglish after he had been sacked as manager (partly, many feel, because of the way he had handled the fall-out of the Evra case). Suárez’s message thanked him for his support. Dalglish sent one back and the words jump off the page: “Don’t ever change”.
The reality, plainly, is he does need to change. That has been clear for some time and, however vague the details, at least he now says he is seeking proper help. Steve Peters, Liverpool’s psychiatrist, did try but Suárez decided after one session it was not for him, partly because he liked being the pesado, the player who relentlessly hassles the opposition, and had some strange hang-up that seeing a shrink might dull those competitive senses.
What nobody can be sure of is whether it will prevent him crossing the line again and, with Suárez, it is always best to keep an open mind. But it is a start and, if nothing else, a much better plan than the one he hatched involving Ajax, their title rivals and a sack of bonus money.
Mangala shows art of defence is not a priority
Ben Amos, third-choice goalkeeper at Manchester United, tells a story that probably goes a long way towards demonstrating what it used to be like on the training ground every time a goal went in. Amos, 24, started training with the seniors when he was 18. And it was a tough school. “I’m talking about real cold-hearted winners,” he says in Wayne Barton’s book, Fergie’s Fledglings. “I’m sure Gary Neville wouldn’t mind me saying he would rip my head off if I did something wrong in training and still be talking about it two days later. They were winners and didn’t care who they upset.”
Neville will tell you that when he was growing up they treated every training-ground goal like a crime. It was a punishing process for him, too, and he raises a fair point when he says that teams don’t seem to care as much about the art of defence. “Coaching has shot off in another direction. I’ve had that confirmed by people at academies. The technical and attacking work is now around 80% with 20% reserved for defensive skills.”
Before, he reckons it was 70-30 the other way.
His old club are the prime example of allowing defensive neglect to seep in. Yet they are far from alone and it seems to have largely gone unnoticed that Manchester City have managed two clean sheets from their nine Premier League games.
That is the same number as United but at least Louis van Gaal has mitigating circumstances bearing in mind the injuries that have meant fast-tracking, among others, Tyler Blackett and Paddy McNair.
Eliaquim Mangala’s erratic performances have also passed with little mention bearing in mind he is now the most expensive defender in English football.
Mangala deserves more settling-in time but the former Porto player has hardly dispelled the opinion from Old Trafford’s scouts, as flagged up here before, that he is a “cross between Joseph Yobo and Jean-Alain Boumsong”. Football can be too impatient sometimes but, at £31.9m, City’s supporters are entitled to have expected better than they have seen so far.
Desperate Villa need cardboard arrows
When Magdeburg, bottom of the German fourth division, went five games without a goal a couple of years ago their supporters armed themselves with luminous cardboard arrows for the next match and gathered behind the net, pointing the way the ball should go. Their banner – “Wir zeigen euch, wo das tor steht!” – translated as “Don’t worry, chaps, we’ll show you where the goal is!” and the arrows went up every time they got into the opposition half.
Aston Villa could do with some help themselves. They have not scored since Gabby Agbonlahor’s winner at Liverpool at 5.39pm on 13 September. The Birmingham Mail have put a “goal clock”on their website and it will have ticked into its 50th day by the time they kick off against Tottenham on Sunday.
Time for the cardboard arrows? All that can be said for certain is that it worked for Magdeburg, who responded by scoring their first goal in 558 minutes of football, and that Roy Keane was only half-joking on his recent book tour when someone asked what he had made of his first few months as Villa’s assistant manager. “Not so much a sleeping giant,” he said. “More like one in a coma.”
