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That venerable old institution, the Oxford English Dictionary, defines fear as “An unpleasant emotion caused by the belief that someone or something is dangerous, likely to cause pain, or a threat.”
We all feel fear. And there is, of course, no greater fear than that of not being able to survive – of dying. But for those of us human beings who have a reasonable assurance of such things, fear can transcend these primal survivalist tendencies and become an obsession that shapes our very lives. Especially when it involves the idea of losing that what we love the most.
Luis Suárez is driven by this most obsessively terrifying of fears – the fear that somehow he may be thrown out of the world he has struggled his entire life to get into, back into a life of abject poverty and broken homes; the fear that he will lose that what he never had – the love of his family.
The world’s oldest and greatest motivator – Love
Suárez had a tough childhood – an upbringing which straddled that most cruel partnership of poverty and a broken family. His father had abandoned him when he was young, and his mother used to scrape together a living for the two by scrubbing floors at several houses.
As a young boy he worked as a street sweeper to help his mother in their dreary ordeal of survival, and at the time, the only people he could call family (apart from her) had been the youth team of the great Club Nacional de Football. At the club though, Suárez frustrated his coaches – despite his prodigious talent, there was no dedication. In all senses of the word, the kid was a slacker.
He was frequently pulled up by his coaches, even had one pull him out of bed as he was late for practice, but all that seemed to have little effect. A struggling backs-to-the wall, hands-to-the-floor existence beckoned.
Then, he met a girl. And he fell in love.
Sofia Balbi, the young girl he was in love with, lived a life that Suárez had only known in his dreams – a comfortable one. She admonished, cajoled and convinced him that he was meant for greater things, if only he would apply himself. So he did just that.
With Sofia behind him, and his resulting newfound commitment, the rise of Suárez was as spectacular as it was inevitable. The Balbi family’s decision to uproot and shift to Spain, though, nearly sent the young kid into depression. A month after they left, in November 2003, Suárez got into his first big controversy. Unhappy with referee Luis Larranga’s decision (a wrong one by most accounts) to caution him for a tackle, he got into the referee’s face.
Quite literally. Two seconds of madness later, Larranga was on the ground, nose bleeding “like a cow” (as an eyewitness recounted later). Reportedly, Suarez had head-butted the ref when he (the ref) drew out a red card to dismiss Suárez for dissent/abuse.
It was the biggest match of his young life, and he felt the ref was unfairly denying him his ticket to the senior team – his ticket to success and to Sofia. So he lashed out. And just then, the unsuspecting world had an early glimpse into the overwhelming desire to win (and accompanying bouts of madness) that would consume every fibre of his being and turn him into the Luis Suárez we now know him as.
F.C. Groningen – the gateway to Europe and Suárez’s dreams
Knowing that the pennies he made sweeping the streets of Montevideo would never get him close to the love of his life, Suarez buckled down and dedicated every waking minute to the only career that would conceivably get him to Europe, to Sofia – football.
As he and the people watching him found, he was rather good at the art of kicking a ball around, and one day a scout from Dutch club FC Groningen watched him demolish Defensor single-handedly. The scout had been there to watch another player, but Suárez, like he does so often these days, had stolen the show.
When approached with an offer, Suárez immediately accepted – not for the money, or the fame, or the glamour. He accepted because it was going to get him to Europe, to Sofia.
Suarez faced tremendous difficulty in adjusting to life in the Netherlands, but he wasn’t going to give up after he had got so close to his dreams – he wasn’t going back to the streets of Montevideo. His prodigious talent shone through soon enough, and attracted the interest of that most legendary of clubs, Ajax Amsterdam.
After a touch of the now familiar ‘Suárez drama’, the deal was sealed. Two years later, he would become captain of Ajax, the leading scorer in the Eredivise and be voted the Footballer of the Year in the Dutch League. He had arrived at the big stage.
Those weren’t his biggest successes though, for that year (2009), he would marry his childhood sweetheart. Sofia Balbi was now Sofia Suárez.
The controversies and the victories – a flawed hero is born
In the summer of 2010, Suarez went to South Africa – the first glimpse the wider footballing world had of the maverick Uruguayan. He had a brilliant tournament, sparking La Celeste’s run to the semifinals with displays of astonishing skill. No one remembers that though – all that anyone can recollect from Suárez’s World Cup was his ridiculous impersonation of Gordon Banks – stopping what would have been a winner from Stephen Appiah on the line, with his hands.
Asamoah Gyan missed the resulting penalty; the Ghanaians lost their collective heads and were thrown out of their continent’s Cup. Suárez had become the very definition of a pantomime villain – his exuberant celebration of Gyan’s miss not helping his cause in the eyes of most of the watching world.
Think about this for a minute, now – from an Uruguayan point of view, if you will. What would you have done in this situation? Let the ball go in, and see your team applauded off the field as brave losers? Or selflessly hurl yourself at the ball in the wildly remote chance that the opposition would miss their penalty and there would be a slight chance for your team to go through?
Suarez wasn’t a loser. He had never accepted defeat. He simply was never going to let his team lose if he could help it, even if it meant he would face punishment and ridicule. And his countrymen love(d) him for it.
The next year would see more controversy as, in what would prove to be his last match with Ajax, he bit Otman Bakkal’s shoulder during a typically ill-tempered match against bitter rivals PSV Eindhoven. He was immediately suspended, but during that suspension he would get a transfer to another legendary club – Liverpool F.C.
At the Merseyside club, Suárez would jump from one controversy to another – all the while scoring goals for the sheer fun of it. The racial abuse incident with Patrice Evra (2011-12) and ‘The Biting: Act II’ with Branislav Ivanovic (2012-13) were discussed to death and shown as ample evidence of the “bad side” of the Uruguayan. This was no role model for the millions of impressionable young minds who looked up to players like him, they said.
While racism in all its forms is deplorable and should be removed by all means available, it must be pointed out that Suárez has always denied abusing Evra with any intention to slight his appearance, culture or race. Not many believe him though.
The biting on the other hand (no pun intended), was indefensible – just as it was in his Ajax times, just as it would be in Brazil. This was just Suárez lashing out – you see, for him, every match represents a battle. A battle he has to win by all means (probably also explains that unfortunate habit of his to dive whenever a defender breathes too hard next to him).
For Suarez, a tackle from an opposition defender isn’t merely a tackle – it is an attempt to take back from him all that he has worked so hard to achieve. He just isn’t going to let that happen, and his reactions on the field are accordingly unpredictable.
In between all this though, he played some astonishing football for Liverpool, and last season was one of the most jaw-dropping displays of talent the great league has witnessed in its long existence. Despite missing six of the Scouser’s early games (the 10-match ban he got for the Ivanovic incident carried forward), he scored 31 goals (not a penalty amongst the 31) to become not just the top scorer in England, but joint top scorer in Europe (along with who else, but Cristiano Ronaldo).
Suarez’s magical ability to transform matches with impossible displays of skill took Liverpool to within a hair’s breadth of their first ever Premier League crown and won him the Player of the Year award from both his fellow professionals (the first non-European to win) and the writers’ association.
Barcelona and history beckon
And then came Brazil; the World Cup. Emergency surgery and intensive care was needed on his left knee to make him available in time. He recovered (almost) and when Uruguay lost against the brilliant Costa Ricans, he knew he had to get back on the field, dodgy knee or not. He inspired them to victory over England and Italy. But in that fateful game came ‘The Biting: Act III’ – Giorgio Chiellini the unwitting victim this time.
With the tough stance taken by FIFA (‘fascist’, according to the enigmatic Uruguayan President Jose Mujica) and the hatred spewing out of commenters and fans (Chiellini was markedly dismissive of the whole affair and said Suárez’s ban was harsh) over the incident, it seemed like the end of his glory days was near. (As an aside, biting surely isn’t the worst offence or act of physical aggression that can be committed on a football field, and Suarez has never been prone to displays of over-the-top, person-hurting violence).
Yet, for all his human flaws, there was no denying his quality as a footballer, and soon Barcelona came a-calling.
He has yet to play an official match for his new club, but he has been training with Lionel Messi, Neymar Jr. and Co. (that draconian punishment having been lifted by FIFA earlier), and his appearances in the recently concluded international friendlies for Uruguay should mean that he is match fit. His ban lifts at 00.00 hours on the 25th of October, 2014.
18 hours later there is the small matter of “El Clásico”
Imperfection is underrated
Those human flaws we talked about earlier, those ‘imperfections’ of character that have been so derided, are what make Suárez such a special hero. In a world obsessed with perfection (the magical journeys in the pursuit of sporting and athletic perfection of Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo stand at the forefront in the world of football), Luis Suárez stands apart. His smile isn’t superstar material (it’s toothy, it’s goofy and it’s brilliant), he isn’t as effortlessly cool as a Zlatan Ibrahimovic, he has off days where nothing goes right for him and he fluffs chances sometimes.
But that’s makes what comes when he is on form so much more special – the dribbles, the flicks and the tricks, the inconceivably brilliant finishes. More than all that though, it’s the legs that never seem to tire, the intense (almost greedy) desire to win and the heart that that says he’d rather drop dead than let someone beat him, that make him a true hero. And he does it all for love.
Imperfection is so underrated.
