Liverpool Balls: Funny Foreinger Luis Suarez Is Good For A Giggle
THE hacks spending their days discussing Luis Suarez have yet to create a single word as entertaining as the man himself’s actions. The racism and cheating and biting have all been terrible, just terrible. But – boy – has he kept us entertained.
Luis Suarez his wife Sofia Balbi and their children, Benjamin and Delfina, arriving for Disney On Ice at the Echo Arena in Liverpool
Everything the hugely talented and unpleasant Suarez has done has been clouded by his status as filthy foreigner. He has given the elite a chance to engage in some cheap moralising about enlightened England. His fearsome bites were worse than Jermain Defoe’s nibbles. His dives are worse than Gareth Bale’s slips. His cheating is so much worse than Team GB’s efforts in the cycling. When he spits, he does so because as a filthy foreigner he knows no better. But we – says Gary Neville – can teach him.
Neville is right. He’s English. He has to be. Doubtless he had word in the ear of his old Manchester Untied teammate Eric Cantona that flying over the advertising boards to kick a Crystal Palace supporter is not our way. But we loved it. C’mon, we all loved it.
And we can all agree that before Luis Suarez arrived at Liverpool, racial abuse and cheating were unheard of. Yes, some had dived and engaged in “verbals”, but that’s what players get from watching too much Football Italia in the 1990s. We are thin-skinned Britishers demand games be played with a straighter bat.
One hack employed to fill newspaper space with Suarez news is the Daily Mail’s Craig Hope. Today he writes:
“He was the man we loved to loathe. Then we loathed to love him. Now we simply love to love him. Sunday’s histrionics apart, Suarez’s transformation from villain to hero is on a par with David Beckham’s rehabilitation in the wake of France 98.”
The antics were chiefly this dive, which should have earned loveable Luis a second yellow card.
The media chatter is such that all hacks must now agree that Suarez is terrific and kind.
The Mail’s Thing From Tring, ex-referee Graham Poll delivers pro-Suarez rot in his analysis of Mark Clattenburg’s performance:
“5 MIN: A very unusual early card in a huge Premier League game. Luis Suarez slid in and caught his opponent late. The card was correct but unnecessary. (Verdict:) HARSH.”
Even when Loveable Luis is wrong, he’s hard done by. Maybe it’s because he’s foreign…
Posted: 14th, April 2014 | In: Liverpool, Sports Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
