Dear Suarez, You Cannot Bite Off More Than You Can Chew

Disclaimer: I am not a big football fan. Most of the times, I follow it casually. When I follow it tenaciously it is always for FIFA World Cup, an event SO OVERWHELMING that is hard not to take notice!

Till June 19th, I had never heard of Luis Suarez.  It was the day when Group D’s England and Uruguay were to clash. Luis Suarez was mentioned in The Times of India as

What happened in that match left England’s World Cup hopes hanging by a thread. Suarez’s double had sunk Wayne Rooney’s best.

I was immediately interested in Luis Suarez. During the match, Suarez had his quiet spells. And then when it was time to shoot, he was a menace.

I found out a lot of ‘good and bad’ things about him as I read about him further. The one that stood out was that he was a ‘sharp’ shooter and loved digging his teeth into his opponents flesh if things were not going his way. Well, his antics amused me because after all this is football. As it is the amount of blood spilled that determines how important was the battle; it is amount of red cards drawn, words yelled and players injured that determines whether the game was worth watching or not.

The other thing is playing for a club is different from playing for a country (or may be that is what I think). Club can be reckless but when you play for your country and that too for an event like World Cup, you tend to carry a sense of responsibility. And so I though hot-blooded Suarez will try staying tamed at least till the time he is in Brazil.

Obviously I was wrong.

In one of their other qualifiers, Uruguay has done it again. They have beaten Italy on Tuesday. It meant goodbye from the World Cup for the four-time champions Italy. With stakes so high, of course it was a match filled with a lot of passion and emotion. But alas, the match got notoriously famous for just one reason.

Suarez ‘bit’ Italy’s Giorgio Chiellini and how.

Suarez sunk again, not Italy but his jaws. He surely was menacing but in a completely different way.

Suarez has a serious ‘jaw digging’ habit so I don’t think he really regretted anything. But after this event, it was evident that Suarez was trying to ascertain the gravity of the situation and the mess he has put himself in. Even when Uruguay got busy in celebrating their win, Suarez seemed ‘thoughtful and aloof.’

Evander Holyfield was quick to tweet

I guess any part of the body is up for eating.

— Evander Holyfield (@holyfield) June 24, 2014

 

And then I found out on ESPN that an online gambling site was offering 175-1 odds that Suarez would bite someone during World Cup. 167 people actually made money when Suarez decided to bite.

 As it stands right now, FIFA has officially charged Luis Suarez for his behavior and he faces lengthy ban that could even jeopardize his position in the current squad.

Luis Suarez bites PSV Eindhoven’s Oatman Bakkal, 2010

Luis Suarez bites Chelsea’s Branislov Ivanovic, 2013

Featured image courtesy: The Times of India