Suarez v Coutinho tonight ? (Brazil v Uruguay , 00:45)
Luis Suárez returns to a thriving Uruguay camp ready to unsettle BrazilThe Barcelona striker’s international ban ends with a return to Brazil for Friday’s World Cup qualifier where he rejoins a team already on the up and confident he has put past misdeeds behind him.
From a narrative point of view, it would have been better if Uruguay had been struggling in World Cup qualification. It is appropriate that Luis Suárez’s return after his ban for biting Giorgio Chiellini during the World Cup in Brazil should come in a World Cup qualifier in Brazil, on Friday, but a sense of drama demands that he should be riding buck-toothed over the horizon to drag Uruguay from a position of hopelessness to qualification for Russia. As it is, he returns to a Uruguay side who are actually in pretty good shape.
There has been almost nothing about Suárez’s absence from international football that has not been absurd. His offence was absurd: a man biting another man in front of a live audience of 40,000 while millions of others watched on television. His sentence was absurd – nine competitive international games, amounting to 21 months, when you could break someone’s leg with a callous tackle and get away with a week’s suspension. And the Uruguayan response that weirdly cast the whole episode as an English-media conspiracy (still being pursued in El Pais this week) was absurd. As ever, the basic rule remains: if you don’t want people to talk about you biting Giorgio Chiellini, don’t bite Giorgio Chiellini.
Óscar Tabárez, now in his 10th year as Uruguay coach, at least seems to acknowledge now that Suárez must take responsibility. “As a person, he must have emotions, he must have a lot going on in his head after almost two years away from the national team,” he said this week. “One of the objectives that we set out is for him to think about playing football and nothing else.
“I recognise his importance as a footballer, how symbolic everything he does is, how important he is for the people of this country but he is coming to take part in a team. He is going to play against teams who recognise the potential he has and who are going to do everything they can to stop him, so he has to be very fresh, more than mature.”
Suárez himself has spoken of “being more intelligent about a lot of things, trying to take advantage of the situations life is putting in front of me” and of “working over the last few weeks on trying to control my anxiety, my nerves”. Which is probably what he has to say, however weird it may be when you start to think about precisely what working on not biting people may entail.
The fact is that his form, and his attitude, have both been exceptional for Barcelona this season, and for Uruguay that is extremely good news. To a side who are already playing well, they are adding one of the two best centre‑forwards in the world. That might not be great news, however, for Diego Rolán or Abel Hernández, the players likely to make way for him.
It’s not just that Uruguay, before this round of games, sat second in the Conmebol group. It’s who they’ve beaten and the way they have beaten them. The only blip was the defeat away against Ecuador, who have begun qualifying with four successive wins. That was one of the two games at altitude out of the way, and Uruguay won the other, beating Bolivia 2-0 in La Paz. There are many who would settle for three points from the two games in the Andes.
Uruguay’s two home games, meanwhile, have both brought impressive 3-0 wins, against a Colombia side who, since the decline of Radamel Falcao, are frustratingly less than the sum of their parts, and against the Copa América champions, Chile. There is no recovery to be inspired, rather an extremely solid base to be augmented.
Suárez has, though, chosen to raise the stakes, betting on the outcome with his Barcelona team-mate and friend, Neymar: the loser has to buy the winner a burger. That they do get on so well – the two and Lionel Messi are neighbours, have a WhatsApp group and are described by Gerard Piqué as being closer than any other three footballers he has ever seen – may help ease Suárez back into the national side; certainly Neymar is not going to be supportive of any plan to wind up his great mate.
For all their recent struggles, and what might generously be described as Dunga’s preference for experienced players, Brazil away remains a major test – they have never lost a home World Cup qualifier and Uruguay have beaten them only once in Brazil in 17 meetings since the final game of the 1950 World Cup. But Uruguay are in the happy position that they can absorb setbacks. Four points from the game in Recife and next week’s home game against Peru would leave them extremely well-placed.
Thoughts may also have begun to drift to the centenary Copa América to be played in the United States in June. With Brazil likely to take a development squad, Chile suffering a post-Copa hangover and without the inspiration of Jorge Sampaoli, and Colombia not what they ought to be, Uruguay have a very decent chance of repeating their success in Buenos Aires 100 years ago.
Before that, though, there is a vulnerable Brazil to be dealt with and, for Suárez, some personal redemption to be sought. Reintegration would be enough.
http://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2016/mar/24/luis-suarez-uruguay-brazil?CMP=twt_gu