Speaking to reporters this week, Suarez continued to perpetuate the spurious myth (endlessly regurgitated by fawning, enabling LFC fans) that he ‘sacrificed’ himself for the team.
“I didn’t do anything wrong. I sacrificed playing in a World Cup semi-final for my team-mates. I didn’t injure anyone. It’s not something to feel bad about”
Then, in a breathtaking display of self-deception, Suarez illustrated his total lack of self-awareness by claiming that he sees himself as a shining light for young, impressionable football fans:
“I think I have been a role model since last summer. I have been professional and I have this desire to forge ahead and play well regardless of what is said to me”
The mind boggles, it really does. Suarez is NOT a role model in any way, shape or form. A ‘role-model’ does not endlessly defend cheating in public, and refuse to accept that a cynical, deliberate handball on the line in a World Cup quarter-final is wrong.
And it’s not the first time Suarez has brazenly defending his cheating. After Uruguay made it into the World Cup semi-final, he offered following gloating, remorseless post-match statement:
“The Hand of God now belongs to me. I made the best save of the tournament. Sometimes in training I play as a goalkeeper so it was worth it. There was no alternative but for me to do that and when they missed the penalty I thought ‘It is a miracle and we are alive in the tournament’.
Prior to Liverpool’s 2012 FA Cup semi-final with Everton, Suarez told ESPN:
“I am dedicated to the team. If I am obliged to stop a ball in the last minute and we win, then I will repeat the action [the Ghana handball]”
And this is a ‘role model’? Any young, impressionable mind reading Suarez’s comments will conclude that it’s okay to cheat; that gamesmanship and deliberately breaking the ‘rules’ is okay, and any act of cheating should be seen as a ‘sacrifice’ for the team.
It’s sickening, and reckless ‘role models’ like Suarez are responsible for turning football into a cesspool of cheating and corruption. His vacuous comments poison the minds of impressionable young fans, and this – combined with the inexcusable acceptance by older fans – perpetuates the neverending cycle of cheating and gamesmanship.
It’s not only Suarez. Speaking to The Telegraph in March, his team-mate, Diego Forlan, hailed Suarez as a ‘warrior’, and praised the Uruguayan’s handball against Ghana. He notedL
“He [Suarez] handled the ball on the line. He did it for the team and the world saw it. When the referee showed the red card, Suarez looked at him innocently and asked: ‘Me?’. He knew it was him, but there was a 0.1 per cent chance that the referee might not. Suarez took that chance. I realise not everyone agrees with that ‘win at any price’ attitude, but to us in Uruguay he’s a hero”.
No wonder football is in the gutter with ignorant, out-of-touch players like Forlan actively encouraging and enabling cheating. Is this what Forlan plans to teach his own children? Lie and cheat to get ahead! Who cares, as long as you gain an advantage!
In what perverse universe is someone a ‘hero’ for deliberately cheating, and then lying about it to the referee? It’s a diseased mindset, which provides weak-minded fans with the subconscious justification they need to defend Suarez’s cheating. And it IS cheating, which is defined by the Oxford dictionary as follows:
“To gain an advantage over and/or deprive of something by using unfair or deceitful methods”
The typical fan excuse is that Suarez merely broke the rules (!), but in the grand scheme of things, it is cheating, irrespective of what the (narrow and localised) football guidelines state. Suarez deliberately tried to gain an advantage using unfair and deceitful methods, ergo it is cheating. End of story.
Whilst Suarez’s comments are clearly unacceptable, the reprehensible enablement that allows cheats to prosper is the biggest cancer of the modern game.
All across the world, fans brazenly celebrate the corrupt mentality of football, and encourage the wilful perversion of fair-play, which promotes a debased ‘win at all costs’ attitude. Just look at the Thomas Muller cheating incident against Portugal; another nail in the coffin of football fair-play, and German fans deify him for it, whilst enabling pundits like Patrick Vieira refuse to condemn it.
The sad irony of it all is that these same ‘fans’ don’t even seem to realise that they’re complicit in destroying the game they loudly proclaim to ‘love’, and Liverpool fans are no different.
In this case, it doesn’t matter how many times Suarez admits that he’s an unrepentant cheat, Reds fans will still find some way to defend, condone, and enable his behaviour, and that (IMO) is the biggest abomination of all.
Zero tolerance on cheating is one of the founding principles of this site. There has to be someone out there flying the flag for fair-play, and there has to be a voice for fans who, like me, unquestioningly oppose the destructive rise of cheating in football.
This article will no doubt upset the many Suarez-apologists amongst LFC’s fanbase, but I don’t care in the slightest about that. In fact, I hope those fans who enable Suarez’s cheating feel attacked. They deserve it for betraying the club they claim to support.
Suarez is an absolutely amazing footballer, and I love watching him play, but I support Liverpool FC, not Luis Suarez FC, and the Uruguayan’s constant attempts to rationalise cheating brings LFC into disrepute, and totally undermines everything the club stands for.