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“It’s worse than it was 10 years ago with the foreign influence of players coming from South America, Spain and Italy. When I was kid and I used to watch Italian football you would see a lot of simulation”.
- Ex-England forward Michael Owen on diving
Diving is unjustified and media calling him out on it time and time again is an attempt to get rid of that.
While some might blame the English media for all the diatribe they have heaped on Suarez, anything they say to defend him falls flat when you look at the Ivanovic incident. How, just how, can you justify biting someone? Can Suarez not see the thousands of people packed into Anfield, the video cameras placed at regular intervals, the millions of people watching the game live on TV and the press box filled with a plethora of journalists, eagerly scribbling down all the action that they see?
Those who defend Suarez will blame the English media for portraying him this way, but I disagree. That bite, as we all have found out with some incredulity, was his second. When he was with Ajax, he was handed a seven-game ban after biting Otman Bakkal of PSV Eindhoven. The local press called him the ‘Cannibal of Ajax’.
You don’t see all of this in the post-season DVDs and the promotional videos of Suarez at Ajax where he showcases his tricks and flicks or when he raises the bar while playing for his country, where controversy follows him. Remember Ghana in 2010? And if he thinks he will get away with this in another nation, he is sorely mistaken.
“It was not an English newspaper that racially abused Patrice Evra at Anfield on October 15, 2011. It was not an English newspaper that refused to shake Evra’s hand at Old Trafford on February 10, 2012. Nor was it an English newspaper that grabbed the arm of Branislav Ivanovic and bit it at Anfield on April 21 this year.
“Yes, Suarez was condemned for those incidents. That was because he deserved to be. Did he really expect his behaviour to be ignored? Does he really think that if he repeats those actions in Madrid, Munich or Rome, they will be excused?”
- Oliver Holt, Daily Mirror
The media are NOT to be blamed in this case.
What the English media has done is expose the shortfalls of Suarez, things he should have removed from his game a long time ago. This is something they do to every player. Those who argue that the press is a bunch of hacks are wrong here because they are trying to right his wrongs. Wrongs that cannot be allowed to plague the English game.
And this is something he has never faced before.
In Part 2, I’ll analyse the media’s responsibility in this scenario.
