Adam Dennehey WAFU manager
Love him or hate him, there is no doubt that Luiz Suarez gets the football world talking. For all his undeniable talent – which has been demonstrated on multiple occasions this season – the regular lapses in judgement make the talismanic Uruguayan a controversial character.
His harshest critics present him as a diving, racist, overly physical lunatic who does more harm than good to the English game. Countering that, he receives his fair share of praise from football supporters, in the past mostly Liverpool supporters and fans of the Uruguayan national team, but more recently, his goalscoring exploits and all-round football has garnered new support from across the footballing spectrum.
Unfortunately, for Suarez he is unable to leave it at his feet to do the talking. Prone to losing his feet, and his head, even at times when the pressure is off, the striker who is adored by the Kop has let himself down on more than one occasion. But it is this latest incident, which saw him bite the arm of Chelsea full back Branislav Ivanovic in the teams’ recent fixture, that has brought as much condemnation from the wider football community than the accusations of racism laid at his door by Patrice Evra more than a year ago.
The act of poor judgement from Suarez on this occasion was again, if not unforgivable, then certainly open to severe criticism. You simply cannot conduct yourself in this way on a football pitch, and evidently Suarez knew this the minute his teeth had connected with Ivanovic.
The fact he scored a late equaliser in a match that finished 2-2 and prevented Chelsea from taking a giant step towards Champions League qualification for next year perhaps rankled just as much with the Chelsea faithful. In their mind, and most of football, he shouldn’t have remained on the pitch.
England’s Football Association, in response to public calls for a severe sanction to be dished out to Suarez, imposed a 10 match suspension, covering the final four fixtures of this season and running into the first six matches of the 2013-14 campaign.
This has naturally prompted debate on Twitter and other media – comparisons have been made to John Terry’s 4 match ban for racism directed at Anton Ferdinand, which came about after a lengthy court case, and Suarez’ own case, which landed him an 8 match ban (for using the racial term on multiple occasions).
People have made the completely valid point that, at its simplest, the FA has shown it is willing to punish a player more for biting an opponent (obviously completely unacceptable) and racism, which is morally objectionable and won’t leave the game.
The FA have demonstrated a level of incompetence, and found themselves hamstrung because of previous punishments they have issued for on and off-field matters. An 8-month ban for Rio Ferdinand in 2003 for missing a drugs test; Mark Bosnich got 9 months after testing positive for cocaine the same year; new Sunderland manager Paolo di Canio was handed an 11-match suspension for pushing referee Paul Alcock over in 1998, and David Prutton missed 10 matches for a similar offence against Alan Wiley seven years later.
The temptation is to try and compare lengths of bans, and the most heavily cited comparison surrounding this incident is the 8 matches for racism given to Suarez. This has set a precedent, and with the Kick It Out campaign doing everything in their power to promote equality and prevent incidents of racism on and off the pitch, the FA have made a blunder in, maybe not purposefully, presenting “Bitegate” as an offence on a level above racism.
I do not entirely agree with this – QPR’s Joey Barton was sent off for his reaction to a Carlos Tevez challenge in the final game of last season against Machester City, and his ban was extended from the standard 3 to 12 games. But on other occasions this season, such as the Wigan midfielder Callum McManaman’s reckless tackle on Newcastle’s Massadio Haidara went unpunished, but because the linesman had at least seen the incident (even if not the extent of the challenge), the FA could take no action.
This is an unfortunate situation. Liverpool fans will argue that what makes Suarez’ case any different; because it wasn’t spotted by an official, and therefore no card was issued, the FA could act. Suarez had previous with biting an opponent at Ajax and this could have played into their decision making.
So my final thoughts on the matter are really the lack of consistency is what makes this such a difficult situation. Racism and biting cannot be put on an equal scale, but both are reprehensible actions that should never be seen on a football field. Suarez will hopefully return from his suspension as the wonderful player he is, when his head is in the right place.
English football needs characters like this with bite, but that doesn’t mean they have to take that literally.
By Daniel Matcham @boymetworld91
