Fourteen years after he put out a hand to prevent a Ghana player’s header from entering his goal in a FIFA World Cup quarterfinal, Uruguay’s Luis Suarez has announced his retirement from international football. That moment of madness, cheating, unfair play or patriotic impulse resulted in a penalty which Ghana missed, thus justifying Suarez’s act in his own mind.
I wrote then: “The embarrassment has gone out of cheating. Uruguay’s Luis Suarez, whose deliberate handling of the ball in the last minute of extra time against Ghana enabled his team to make it to the semifinals, says, ‘It was worth it to be sent off in this way. It was complicated and tough. We suffered to the end, but the hand of God is mine now.’ Notice how he considers the exchange a fair one — I go out, but my country stays in. Is he a super patriot or a sportsman who has brought the game into disrepute?”
Suarez’s reference was to Diego Maradona’s ‘Hand of God’ goal in the 1986 World Cup, when the Argentine scored against England with his hand.
Not surprisingly, whatever the rest of the world thought about these acts, the footballers became heroes in their own countries. Sport tends to deify cheats who don’t get caught, even if there is something uncomfortable about such partial heroes who are exalted in one country but vilified in another.
Suarez, undoubtedly a talented player who formed a great partnership with Lionel Messi at Barcelona, had another claim to non-footballing fame. This, for biting opponents! It is so bizarre that no round-up of his excellent career can omit mention of this dental disintegration — only one letter away from Steve Waugh’s famous line about handling opponents on the cricket field!
The shoulder seemed to be Suarez’s preferred area for sinking his teeth into an opponent. The first recorded instance was against PSV Eindhoven’s Otman Bakkal. When he bit Chelsea defender Branislav Ivanovic, the incident was missed by the referee; a year later, when he bit Italy’s Giorgio Chiellini, that too was missed by the referee.
In his book Crossing The Line: My Story, Suarez wrote, “I know biting appals 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. None of the bites has been like Mike Tyson on Evander Holyfield’s ear. But none of this makes it right…”
France’s Thierry Henry once said, after his handball probably denied Ireland a place in the 2010 World Cup, that it was necessary to exploit what was exploitable. This is the mantra of a particular type of sportsman. Often patriotism trumps fairplay, although it might just be selfishness rather than concern for the team’s progress.
When I heard Suarez was retiring, it wasn’t his football I recalled so much as his biting and deliberate handball. Unfortunately, some athletes are condemned to be remembered by their worst acts.
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