Fantastic bit of writing.
Spot on.
There's on or two things I'd pick up on. I don't think that it is helpful to think of it as being about the foreign nature of suarez. You are totally correct that a senior England international could just about douse the ref in petrol and set him on fire. But that only applies to senior england internationals. Players who were members of the Golden generation/shower. And by Christ it applies to england internationals. Terry literally gets away with murder, Lampard broke xabi alonso's ankle with a murderous lunge and got away with a yellow card. God alone knows how many times wayne rooney should have been sent off for dissent alone, never mind his violent episodes. Think of all of the times the referee chuckles and says "Paul Scholes, what a joker, 79 years old and he still hasn't learned to tackle, ho,ho,ho." as some poor unfortunate lies rolling on the ground clutching his thigh or knee. or even closer to home, jamie carragher opening up a gaping wound in nani and getting a yellow card. I can remember Stevie G getting away with quite a bit back when the thought that every tackle was a life or death battle. It's an across the board kind of thing. But pretty much the same rules apply to everyone else.
It's not really that suarez is foreign is at issue, I mean god knows there are a lot of premiership players from abroad, it's that he just doesn't get the same extraordinary special treatment that senior england internationals get. I think you have to look a little closer to Luis for the cause of the problems.
Marriner, who had shown something of a laissez-faire approach to this all afternoon, clearly took offence at being told how to do his job, perhaps like Steve Bennett did at Old Trafford back in 2008 when Fernando Torres calmly pointed out that he was being kicked from one side of the pitch to the other and got booked for his trouble. Referees can be a sensitive bunch, can’t they? Well, they can be, yes, but there is a maddening inconsistency to their interpretation of what constitutes a bookable offence and what doesn’t.
A good rule of thumb is don't give visible signs of dissent. I was listening a former footballer, I think it was Kenny Cunningham on Newstalk, saying that you can say essentially whatever you want to the referee as long as you don't make it really obvious to everyone that you are challenging his authority, like waving your arms, or pointing, or crowding in on him. That really pisses them off. If you just shout at them, that's between you and them. What is said on the pitch generally stays on the pitch. If you poke your finger in their face, or bounce the ball into the air in frustration, That's between you, them and the crowd. I spotted something in a video I'll link to below. It looks as though Bennett is doing everything he can do to ignore torres, right up until the point where he makes that quacking/flapping lips gesture with his hand, and he immediately reaches for the card. I used to think that was a very harsh yellow card, until I spotted that. It's not that he's foreign, or that he's not getting the protection he deserves, it's that he had crossed a certain line, and he had picked the worst weekend in the history of dissent to do it.
I think there's a very big lesson for Luis in that. If he's got a complaint to make to the ref, he doesn't need to look like the angriest man in the world. Dramatics are what gets you booked. and even if it doesn't get you booked every time, it makes it more likely that the ref is going to get pissed off with you, and book you at some point, for something you might have otherwise gotten away with. It also gets grating and distracting if used too often, and I'm afraid that it along with other things, have turned him into a kind of pantomime villain. But that is entirely down to him. People largely only see him as he presents himself. if he presents himself as some sort of cartoonish tasmanian devil figure, snarling, and filled with rage and anger, that's what people, and referees are going to see him as.
It’s only a personal feeling, but I have to wonder whether a lesser player than the England and Chelsea left-back would have received that kind of temperance from Riley. The ability to book players for abusive language was already there at that point, and indeed Cole was booked as I recall, but Steve Bennett certainly didn’t show that level of patience to Javier Mascherano at Old Trafford a few days later. Was that simply down to a difference in refereeing style or maybe a case of following the new hard line orders from the FA to the letter? Perhaps, but I bet it didn’t hurt either that this was a hot-headed South-American and not an England international.
As far as I recall, most of the fuss over ashley Cole, was that as the ref was booking him, he kept showing him his back. It was a pretty outrageous display of brattishness, and disrespect, and It was simply too much. As for mascherano, I watched him Through my fingers in that match, after He got booked for smashing into paul Scholes, with incredible force. In any game other than a Sky Super Soccer EARTHQUAKE Sunday match between two big red/blue clubs, he might well have been sent off. But after the booking he was just shouting Fuck off Fuck off Fuck off." it was like there was someone else in his body. It was the total opposite of the usual steely eyed, cold tempered, shrewd, calculating defensive midfield genius. He then went on to make a serious of heavy tackles, not all of them successful, and kept giving the ref some serious and uncharacteristic lip. It was like he was trying to get sent off. It was insane. He was never like that in any other game against man utd. And then he ran a long way, and broke xabi alonso's grip to give the ref grief, over something that didn't really have anything to do with him. At some point, the ref is going to send you off. You can see some of it in this video here.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4qQTiC0I-c (you can see the torres incident at 45 seconds.
There was more to it that is shown there. I remember it very clearly because it was such an uncharacteristic display. Mascherano as close as you can get to a cold eyed clinical professional. He sees the game as a series of jobs to be done. He does them all. That's why he's been such a success at barcelona in a completely alien position. He doesn't get angry often because that gets in the way. He's very good at tackling, so most of his fouls are conscious tactical fouls to break up play. if he gets booked for Anger, or dissent, that is one foul less that he can commit, when the team needs to break up an attack, and he can't win the ball. This was an entirely different Mascherano. But In that game, he really went out of his way to make it difficult for Bennett to not send him off. And he did it on the worst weekend in the history of dissent.
The Issue simply was that in that game he was out of control. And when Luis is shouting and waving at referees, he's out of control. he's lost focus. I don't understand how this frequently total loss of focus helps his game. It certainly doesn't win favour with referees. He simply complains too much, and referees start to discount it after a while. Referees no longer see a link between suarez complaining, and a serious wrong having been done to him, so they can't really tell when he's justified, and when he's not. as someone mentioned above, he's a bit like Craig Bellamy in this respect. bellamy starts complaining good and early, he's always getting into angry rows at his direct opponent. he always looks like the angriest man in the world when he's doing it. How many times have you seen the camera fall on bellamy and his face is wrinkled up into a ball of rage as he's swearing at someone, frequently an official?
No doubt that kind of attitude would make you scratch and claw for absolutely everything (I wish I had a little more of it) and we’re lucky to have someone like that. But here’s the thing: referees don’t care. The FA don’t care. In a sport that’s regularly filled with rage and vented spleen, diving and cynicism, where the widespread attitude seems to be that the ends justify the means, some people nonetheless get singled out and gain a reputation for gamesmanship. This has already happened with Suárez. When I look at him, I don’t see a dirty player. He’s put in a couple of awkward challenges in the past (Parker and Ivanovic at Anfield last season spring to mind) but there was no malice in them. He’s gone down easily on occasion, but there are (and have been) far worse offenders in the English game than him. Yet as early as the start of last season, there was this sense that he was somehow the greatest cheat who had ever set foot on English soil, a figurative dark cloud hanging ominously in a sunny blue sky.
Again that comes back to the image he's created for himself (with the help of the media) as a pantomime villain. That same thing that drives him to compete to the same level in every game, often makes him behave the same way in every game. Some players shout at referees, Luis does it in every game, several times. Some forwards make bad tackles, because they're kind of shit at it. The thing that drives him to make so many tackles for a forward, leads him to make a lot of tackle fouls for a forward (rather than the andy carroll, shoving fouls) It's the consistency that gets him a reputation for dirtiness, rather than a smaller number of spectacular murderous lunges. A lot of players dive. Luis goes to ground very easily fairly consistently. If he works harder to stay on his feet, then falling to the ground will start to mean something again, and he'll get more free kicks.
All of this comes back to the same thing, a lack of control. He needs to mature as a player. He should look at lionel messi. Messi is a ferociously competitive player. But he is completely cold on the pitch. He can whine at referees a bit, but he doesn't do it all that often, or throughout a game. I'm not suggesting that Suarez completely change his character, but recognize what works for the greatest player in the world, and see what he can use to adapt his game, and move towards messi. Perhaps he needs to work with a sports psychologist to address the difference that he points out between his on pitch, and off pitch personalities, then you could see him become a radically different player.
He needs to become part of a system. He can't be the only one talking to the referee all the time. Pressuring the referee should become a team thing, like at Barcelona. That way the ref doesn't get pissed off with any one player. And he can't be complaining all the time. He can't be making some fairly dodgy tackles, because he is the only one closing down defenders. Think of how useful he could be as part of a full team pressing effort, where it would be less about a lone warrior winning implausible battles.
It's the same with his play on the ball. he has so many things going for him, but his play lacks focus, and he winds up doing a lot of things that have a relatively low probability of success (shooting from too far out, when he could go closer for example) Again this is as much due to the lack of a coherent system around him. And if Rodgers is capable of constructing a proper pass and move style, then he will have a lot more support, and be a lot more effective. A more successful Suarez, will hopefully be a less angry suarez.
All of the elements are there for him to become a really great player, but he has to mature, and if he does, then that will become the story about suarez, and people will print that, because that is news. And that is how you change people's perceptions. And that is also how we can get the best out of suarez.
BTW there is a good interview with Sid lowe about that piece on Newstalk.ie. If you go to their website, and click on listen back, and then click on the podcast tab in the pop-up. Then go to off the ball, and then the football show podcast, and I think it's the one from the 20th of august. It's after about 33 minutes. It's quite interesting, about his motivations in writing the piece, His impression of what suarez is like, and the nature of modern football fans.
once again a lovely piece of writing
