When I was reading through the text this one quote stood out to me “On the first day, my translator, Felipe, met me in the lobby of my hotel, and as we started making calls, a referee warned him that I had bad intentions. Why else would I want to find someone attacked by Suarez, if not to use the referee to bludgeon their favorite son?”. For me, it covered the main point of the article the idea of reputation being protected by their country. Luis Suarez is being protected/shielded by the Uruguayan referees and people when it comes to reputation is a big part of soccer culture, especially in South America. In the United States, you don’t see the country defend their national team players since that isn’t a big thing here. That is one of the things I have never really seen as an American sports fan. That is the biggest thing that I gained from this reading, along with the divisiveness of Suarez’s character. I can’t think of a time when players here in the United States an athlete attacked other players and got away with it with their reputation. Recently Draymond Green has received a lot of ridicule for getting into fights on the court, for something that in comparison is a lot less. I found it very fascinating how countries are so willing to defend athletes who are from there while expecting so much out of them when it comes to national play since that isn’t a thing here. Another difference I found is that references how referees are willing to protect players. That is also not a thing here as a lot of referees have antagonist relationships with players. Especially in the NBA, there is a lot of referee-player conflict. I also read in the text about how the situation between Suarez and the referee has gone through a lot of different stories and has split into a lot of different stories “”He fell,” Martinez Chenlo said, “accidentally into the referee.””. This makes a lot more sense to me as an American sports fan as a lot of different athletes have had situations evolve into different stories and perspectives. Like Draymond Green saying that his fights were accidents, this feels similar as it evolved to be a much more aggressive act to defame him as a person, due to other on-the-court issues.
