Luis Suarez has been one of my favorite players while watching soccer. Whether it was his record-breaking 2013-2014 Liverpool season or his time as part of MSN, he is a joy to watch. Admittedly, I was drawn to liking him because I have always been a fan of the “dark arts” of soccer. This is not a popular take, but I have always appreciated the corner flag time-wasting or the tackle you put in when someone is through on goal. Luis Suarez is a master of the dark arts.
This article aims to explore why he is the way that he is. Some claim he is just a “dirty player,” yet this article argues that there is a method to his madness. If you were to play a word association game and hear the word “Suarez,” you would likely think of biting before you think of any record, goal, or trophy of his. Interestingly, this article focuses primarily on Suarez’s youth to explain why he is the way he is by focusing on the story about Suarez and “the referee.”
As the writer explores this story, searching for the conclusion, he finds out less than he would’ve liked about Suarez and his actions, but he unearths plenty about the conditions in which Suarez grew up and how they shaped him into the man he is today. This is not a man with “two personalities,” the angry, violent one and the caring father; there is one Suarez.
This man is desperate to win, fighting on the field for his family and never returning to what he grew up in. The opponents are not simply opponents but enemies trying to stop him and send him and his family back to those terrible conditions. No one could understand how horrified he is when he steps onto a field to use an overused phrase: “Soccer is more than just a game.”
