Daily Mail buries Liverpool’s Luis Suarez in hypocrisy
FOR a newspaper like the Daily Mail whose Steve Doughty said racism in football was no big deal, the decision to assassinate Liverpool’s Luis Suarez in print is weird. Suarez has been found guilty of using racist language towards the ears of Manchester United’s Patrice Evra. (See here.) Liverpool and Suarez deny any wrongdoing.
Chris Wheeler adapts the Mail’s failed editorial policy to castigate Suarez:
Considering Luis Suarez had just received a seven-match ban and been branded the ‘Cannibal of Ajax’ when he moved to Anfield in January, Liverpool should perhaps have realised their new £22.8million signing might land himself in hot water sooner or later.
Did Suarez try to eat Evra? And cannibalism is very much in vogue in the Netherlands?
As the 24-year-old digests his eight-match ban and £40,000 fine, let’s not forget he still has to face a separate FA charge for allegedly making a one-fingered gesture at Fulham fans.
Football fans are still reeling from the awfulness of getting back what they dish out. There is talk of therapy.
It would be fair to say that Suarez, who learned his trade on the streets of Montevideo after moving to the Uruguayan capital at the age of seven with his mother and six brothers, has not been a stranger to controversy.
It is a tabloid rule that all South American footballers learn footballers on the street, or beach if Brazilian. Chances are that two-time World Cup winners Uruguay have pitches with actual grass, nets and training schemes. But if the foreigner can be portrayed as poor and earthy, then so it must be.
The cannibal tag was coined by Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf after he bit into the shoulder of opponent Otman Bakkal during a game between Ajax and PSV Eindhoven in November last year.
Nasty.
Wheleer then goes through Suarez’s history like a hack looking up things on the internet. But the key thing is that Suarez has no history of racism.
Wheeler then sticks the knife in:
His supporters prefer to overlook the chequered past and point to the sublime skill and ability in front of goal… Some inevitably bring up the charity work. ‘Football has got this tremendous power of joining people, without any skin, religion and social discrimination,’ Suarez once said.
Those words might now sound a little hollow.
Football no longer has that ability? Luis Suarez was on the same pitch as Patrice Evra, wasn’t he..?
Posted: 21st, December 2011 | In: Sports Comment (1) | TrackBack | Permalink
