I was thinking that. It's not 9pm UK time we find out right?
Bite, Nibble, Munch and Chomp
- Thread starter Red Astaire
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One keeps hearing that argument, but I for one completely and utterly disagree with it. The fact that an act is off the wall has naff all to do with how serious (or otherwise) it is. The way the two things keep getting confused in the media is bad enough without seeing it on here as well.
Great article.
Luis Suárez’s Giorgio Chiellini clash adds to story of violence and deceit
Uruguayan hero has been so indulged by his apologists that he is starting to believe that there is a conspiracy against him
• Uruguayan FA claims bite marks are Photoshopped
Luis Suárez, right, plays the victim after his clash with Italy's defender Giorgio Chiellini. Photograph: Matthias Hangst/Getty Images
Earlier this year, an American sportswriter by the name of Wright Thompson travelled to Uruguay to speak to some of the people who knew Luis Suárez to try to get a better picture of his background. Thompson had heard of one story going back to Suárez’s childhood, of him being sent off in a youth match and head-butting the referee and how one witness had described the victim’s nose bleeding “like a cow”. He wanted to know if it was true. He wanted to find the referee.
Thompson went to Montevideo and spent weeks on the case. Everywhere he went, there was a common theme. “Everyone defended Suárez,” he recalled. He trawled to the end of the internet and he tracked down Enrique Moller, the local attorney who reviewed all youth league disciplinary problems. Moller remembered an incident involving the 15-year-old Suárez, but said he had no details. At Nacional, where Suárez played his youth football, they told Thompson all the records were lost. At the national library, he searched the bound volumes of El País and El Observador but found nothing.
Someone told him the Uruguayan football federation would have records, but they did not. Thompson, writing for ESPN, had the impression people did not really appreciate him, a foreign journalist, asking questions about a guy they felt was persecuted outside their country. They are protective in Uruguay about Suárez, as a couple of English journalists found out last week when they travelled to one of the team’s press conferences in Sete Lagoas, in the countryside near Belo Horizonte. Suárez was due to talk and three security guys, in bouncer pose, made it clear they were required to leave.
Thompson was persistent. Eventually he got the name for the referee, Luis Larranaga, and arranged to meet Martinez Chenlo, one of the sports editors of the Montevideo papers. Chenlo rolled his eyes and told him the same as everyone else: it was garbage. To prove his point, he rang a guy named Ricardo Perdomo, who had coached Suárez in the youth leagues. Thompson recalled Chenlo grinning at him throughout the phone conversation “as if he were getting all the details he needed to prove that the story was made up”. Then he hung up and explained what had happened. Suárez was 16, not 15. Nacional were playing Danubio, another local team, and it was absolutely not a head-butt. He was simply protesting about a referee’s mistake, and who doesn’t do that? Sure, his head hit the referee’s face, but not on purpose. “He fell,” Chenlo said, “accidentally into the referee.”
He fell. One thing you learn about Suárez: he does a lot of falling. “Note how Suárez stumbles after jumping for the ball and how his face hits the shoulder of the Italian player,” one report from Uruguay explained of theassault on Giorgio Chiellini on Tuesday. Óscar Tabárez, the Uruguay coach, told a BBC reporter he had an “agenda” for asking about it. “This is a football World Cup, not about cheap morality,” he said.
Another report, on the Tenfield website, said the only people who cared about the biting were English.
“Their intention was for Fifa to expel Luisito. It would be good if these Englishmen remember how they won the World Cup in 1966 with a ball which was not a goal.”
And on it goes: the brainwashing, the buck-passing, the deception. “There was no single picture to prove there was a bite,” according to El Observador, questioning whether the photographs from foreign news agencies had been altered. El País reminded its readers that the English press “harassed the Uruguayan after the bite on Branislav Ivanovic”. Últimas Noticias noted: “Nobody talks about how Suárez was injured in the jaw and the eye”.
Uruguay captain, Diego Lugano, describes Luis Suárez's alleged bite during their final World Cup group match against Italy as inconsequential
All of which can make writing about Suárez slightly awkward when we already know the response, the denial, the finger-pointing and the automatic counter-allegation that this is some kind of payback time from a vengeful English press, who would never dream of treating one of their own this way. Someone, perhaps, should tell John Terry that after the avalanche of criticism for his abuse of Anton Ferdinand, coming directly after Suárez’s own racial-abuse case.
Or just imagine if Wayne Rooney had sunk his teeth into opponents on three different occasions. But the default setting will not budge. Suárez’s apologists follow like ants. They have their lines prepared and it is clever, in a warped kind of way. Every article from an English newspaper or website feeds the delusion.
So here is a prediction from Cathal Kelly, a sports columnist for the Toronto Star, in a piece he wrote about Suárez from 15 December 2013. “He will do something insane at this summer’s World Cup – mark it down. Afterwards, he will prompt an ugly transfer saga for a world-record fee.”
Halfway right, and there is plenty of time for Suárez to attempt the second part. His misbehaviour is shocking, but no longer surprising. It is a recurring theme and there will, almost certainly, be a next time.
In Argentina, when Carlos Tevez was on strike from Manchester City, a journalist from Buenos Aires told me how many of his colleagues never reported a single word about it because that would have meant criticising, or at least questioning, a player they revered too much. They pretended instead that he was simply on holiday, which, I suppose, he was.
Suárez is treated in a similar way and maybe that is a part of the problem. At Liverpool, they have redrawn the line just about every time he has crossed it. His story last season was put forward as one of redemption, the narrative being that he had learned from his mistakes and decided it was time to show the world it was untrue to think he was a lunatic or, as Thompson put it, “bat-shit crazy”. What actually happened was that he put it on hold. More fool the people who lapped up all that public relations fluff. “North of his feet,” Kelly also wrote, “there is nothing good about Suárez.”
Not everyone thinks the same. But it is certainly true that a less talented player would have been kicked out of the sport, or removed to its edges, a long time ago. The bite is one thing, but it is actually the pretence that it never occurred afterwards that tells us more. He did the same after the Ivanovic assault: limping, indignant, wearing a faux look of outrage, wanting punishment for the Chelsea player.
Some believe this shows his attacks must be pre-meditated. But what kind of fool would set out in a World Cup match, watched by a global audience, to do this, knowing the consequences?
More likely, it is deeper than that. Toddlers bite. Dogs bite. Normal, fully functioning adults don’t. When it is part of a long, unending pattern, that is when it looks pathological and the perpetrator needs professional help. We can all play at amateur psychology but the evidence here points to someone who is incapable sometimes of processing the things that threaten his ability to win, or score goals, as a normal act of his sport. Suárez takes it as a personal affront, maybe even an act of aggression.
The problem – or one of the problems – is that he is so heavily indulged it actually feels like he has started to believe what he says about it all being the imagination of others. If there is one person around him telling him he needs time with Dr Steve Peters, the psychiatrist at Anfield, we can be sure there are another 100 or so saying he is absolutely fine, and that it is the rest of the world with the problem.
Now, at the Uruguayan camp, they are trying to make a case that Chiellini made it up, that the photographs were doctored and that the controversy is the work of the embittered English. Perhaps they should look at the front page of O Globo and its “El Loco!”headline. Or how Suárez Bite III is being treated elsewhere.
Instead, Uruguay have adopted a siege mentality that ultimately does their player – violent, deceitful, unapologetic – no long-term good.
Then there was that piece by Thompson of his time in Montevideo and where his investigation finally led him. The story is well known of howSuárez dedicated his life to football so he could be reunited with his girlfriend, Sofia, after her family moved to Spain. But in November 2003 he was working as a street cleaner and in one of his darker moments.
A championship was on the line and in the final match of the season, with 15 minutes to go, Suárez flew into a Danubio player. The referee showed him a yellow card and Suárez appeared in his face. Larranaga went back to his pocket for a red. Suárez snapped.
Often with rage, there are hidden layers about what brings it to the surface. Before leaving Montevideo, Thompson sent a message to Suárez’s mother, to clarify when Sofia had moved away. The reply came back: October 2003. It was the month before her lovesick boyfriend had one of those unfortunate falls.
Luis Suárez’s Giorgio Chiellini clash adds to story of violence and deceit
Uruguayan hero has been so indulged by his apologists that he is starting to believe that there is a conspiracy against him
• Uruguayan FA claims bite marks are Photoshopped
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- Daniel Taylor in Rio de Janiero
- The Guardian, Thursday 26 June 2014 05.55 AEST
- Jump to comments (395)
Earlier this year, an American sportswriter by the name of Wright Thompson travelled to Uruguay to speak to some of the people who knew Luis Suárez to try to get a better picture of his background. Thompson had heard of one story going back to Suárez’s childhood, of him being sent off in a youth match and head-butting the referee and how one witness had described the victim’s nose bleeding “like a cow”. He wanted to know if it was true. He wanted to find the referee.
Thompson went to Montevideo and spent weeks on the case. Everywhere he went, there was a common theme. “Everyone defended Suárez,” he recalled. He trawled to the end of the internet and he tracked down Enrique Moller, the local attorney who reviewed all youth league disciplinary problems. Moller remembered an incident involving the 15-year-old Suárez, but said he had no details. At Nacional, where Suárez played his youth football, they told Thompson all the records were lost. At the national library, he searched the bound volumes of El País and El Observador but found nothing.
Someone told him the Uruguayan football federation would have records, but they did not. Thompson, writing for ESPN, had the impression people did not really appreciate him, a foreign journalist, asking questions about a guy they felt was persecuted outside their country. They are protective in Uruguay about Suárez, as a couple of English journalists found out last week when they travelled to one of the team’s press conferences in Sete Lagoas, in the countryside near Belo Horizonte. Suárez was due to talk and three security guys, in bouncer pose, made it clear they were required to leave.
Thompson was persistent. Eventually he got the name for the referee, Luis Larranaga, and arranged to meet Martinez Chenlo, one of the sports editors of the Montevideo papers. Chenlo rolled his eyes and told him the same as everyone else: it was garbage. To prove his point, he rang a guy named Ricardo Perdomo, who had coached Suárez in the youth leagues. Thompson recalled Chenlo grinning at him throughout the phone conversation “as if he were getting all the details he needed to prove that the story was made up”. Then he hung up and explained what had happened. Suárez was 16, not 15. Nacional were playing Danubio, another local team, and it was absolutely not a head-butt. He was simply protesting about a referee’s mistake, and who doesn’t do that? Sure, his head hit the referee’s face, but not on purpose. “He fell,” Chenlo said, “accidentally into the referee.”
He fell. One thing you learn about Suárez: he does a lot of falling. “Note how Suárez stumbles after jumping for the ball and how his face hits the shoulder of the Italian player,” one report from Uruguay explained of theassault on Giorgio Chiellini on Tuesday. Óscar Tabárez, the Uruguay coach, told a BBC reporter he had an “agenda” for asking about it. “This is a football World Cup, not about cheap morality,” he said.
Another report, on the Tenfield website, said the only people who cared about the biting were English.
“Their intention was for Fifa to expel Luisito. It would be good if these Englishmen remember how they won the World Cup in 1966 with a ball which was not a goal.”
And on it goes: the brainwashing, the buck-passing, the deception. “There was no single picture to prove there was a bite,” according to El Observador, questioning whether the photographs from foreign news agencies had been altered. El País reminded its readers that the English press “harassed the Uruguayan after the bite on Branislav Ivanovic”. Últimas Noticias noted: “Nobody talks about how Suárez was injured in the jaw and the eye”.
Uruguay captain, Diego Lugano, describes Luis Suárez's alleged bite during their final World Cup group match against Italy as inconsequential
All of which can make writing about Suárez slightly awkward when we already know the response, the denial, the finger-pointing and the automatic counter-allegation that this is some kind of payback time from a vengeful English press, who would never dream of treating one of their own this way. Someone, perhaps, should tell John Terry that after the avalanche of criticism for his abuse of Anton Ferdinand, coming directly after Suárez’s own racial-abuse case.
Or just imagine if Wayne Rooney had sunk his teeth into opponents on three different occasions. But the default setting will not budge. Suárez’s apologists follow like ants. They have their lines prepared and it is clever, in a warped kind of way. Every article from an English newspaper or website feeds the delusion.
So here is a prediction from Cathal Kelly, a sports columnist for the Toronto Star, in a piece he wrote about Suárez from 15 December 2013. “He will do something insane at this summer’s World Cup – mark it down. Afterwards, he will prompt an ugly transfer saga for a world-record fee.”
Halfway right, and there is plenty of time for Suárez to attempt the second part. His misbehaviour is shocking, but no longer surprising. It is a recurring theme and there will, almost certainly, be a next time.
In Argentina, when Carlos Tevez was on strike from Manchester City, a journalist from Buenos Aires told me how many of his colleagues never reported a single word about it because that would have meant criticising, or at least questioning, a player they revered too much. They pretended instead that he was simply on holiday, which, I suppose, he was.
Suárez is treated in a similar way and maybe that is a part of the problem. At Liverpool, they have redrawn the line just about every time he has crossed it. His story last season was put forward as one of redemption, the narrative being that he had learned from his mistakes and decided it was time to show the world it was untrue to think he was a lunatic or, as Thompson put it, “bat-shit crazy”. What actually happened was that he put it on hold. More fool the people who lapped up all that public relations fluff. “North of his feet,” Kelly also wrote, “there is nothing good about Suárez.”
Not everyone thinks the same. But it is certainly true that a less talented player would have been kicked out of the sport, or removed to its edges, a long time ago. The bite is one thing, but it is actually the pretence that it never occurred afterwards that tells us more. He did the same after the Ivanovic assault: limping, indignant, wearing a faux look of outrage, wanting punishment for the Chelsea player.
Some believe this shows his attacks must be pre-meditated. But what kind of fool would set out in a World Cup match, watched by a global audience, to do this, knowing the consequences?
More likely, it is deeper than that. Toddlers bite. Dogs bite. Normal, fully functioning adults don’t. When it is part of a long, unending pattern, that is when it looks pathological and the perpetrator needs professional help. We can all play at amateur psychology but the evidence here points to someone who is incapable sometimes of processing the things that threaten his ability to win, or score goals, as a normal act of his sport. Suárez takes it as a personal affront, maybe even an act of aggression.
The problem – or one of the problems – is that he is so heavily indulged it actually feels like he has started to believe what he says about it all being the imagination of others. If there is one person around him telling him he needs time with Dr Steve Peters, the psychiatrist at Anfield, we can be sure there are another 100 or so saying he is absolutely fine, and that it is the rest of the world with the problem.
Now, at the Uruguayan camp, they are trying to make a case that Chiellini made it up, that the photographs were doctored and that the controversy is the work of the embittered English. Perhaps they should look at the front page of O Globo and its “El Loco!”headline. Or how Suárez Bite III is being treated elsewhere.
Instead, Uruguay have adopted a siege mentality that ultimately does their player – violent, deceitful, unapologetic – no long-term good.
Then there was that piece by Thompson of his time in Montevideo and where his investigation finally led him. The story is well known of howSuárez dedicated his life to football so he could be reunited with his girlfriend, Sofia, after her family moved to Spain. But in November 2003 he was working as a street cleaner and in one of his darker moments.
A championship was on the line and in the final match of the season, with 15 minutes to go, Suárez flew into a Danubio player. The referee showed him a yellow card and Suárez appeared in his face. Larranaga went back to his pocket for a red. Suárez snapped.
Often with rage, there are hidden layers about what brings it to the surface. Before leaving Montevideo, Thompson sent a message to Suárez’s mother, to clarify when Sofia had moved away. The reply came back: October 2003. It was the month before her lovesick boyfriend had one of those unfortunate falls.
He's an outstanding footballer and would be a great loss if we ever lost him but he's an animal with more than a screw loose. He's a tit.
It's funny though because I'm fairly certain there is a photoshopped version out there, that a good chunk of the media are using. But in the original, you can still clearly see that there are in fact bite marks anyways.
I guess the issue is that they have more of an argument than they actually should have in this situation. And I find that almost as hilarious as this whole debacle was in the first place.
I guess the issue is that they have more of an argument than they actually should have in this situation. And I find that almost as hilarious as this whole debacle was in the first place.
Brian Durand @BrianDurand56 · 6hHow many papers will now print this old pic of Chiellini showing that the 'bite marks' were old scars?
How many papers will now print this old pic of Chiellini showing that the 'bite marks' were old scars?
Even if it is an old scar, and that contradicts the conspiracy theorists saying the scars are photoshopped, what difference does that make? You can clearly see him on tape biting Chiellini. If you still havent seen it there is a gif about 4 pages earlier on this thread.
The more we defend him the more ridiculous we look, hes clearly in the wrong so let him take his punishment like a man instead of trying to justify every ridiculous thing he does, has nobody learned from the T Shirt fiasco?
How much is Thompson in the loop these days? I would imagine a fair bit, but at the same time given that the club have been very quiet about the incident I don't think anyone would thank him for leaking any news at this stage and I don't think he would do so out of turn anyway, so would assume this is (at this time at least) only his opinion.
That said, it wouldn't shock me at all if the club have finally decided that Suarez is more hassle than he is worth.
He deffo bit him. I don't see it as more violent than Sakho's elbow tonight though. It is just a lot weirder. I hope he gets a 2 game ban max and FIFA just tell the press to stop being hysterical fannies.
I reckon his world cup is over and rightly so, you can argue about the level of violence but certain acts are considered to be beyond the pale. If a player spits in the face of another player he wont do him any physical harm but I would still expect a hefty ban, same with a bite. I really cant understand why a grown man would do this on three separate occasions, he is a complete weirdo and statements like this are just making him look more bizarre
‘These situations arise on the pitch, I’ve collided with his shoulder. It drove me a little crazy too, but these things happen on the pitch. There’s no need to make a story out of it.
Standard Chartered would be wise to just STFU, keep out of it and just take all of the TV / Media exposure coming their way ! People don't remember context.
I'm pretty pleased the British media are getting a kicking from somewhere .... long have they deserved it.
Au contraire.
It's just a rehash of Thompson 's article with amateur psychological supposition thrown in (If there is one person around him telling him he needs time with Dr Steve Peters, the psychiatrist at Anfield, we can be sure there are another 100 or so saying he is absolutely fine, and that it is the rest of the world with the problem) to personalise it. Fact is Thompson himself was indeed trying to get the dirt on Suarez and this is just an extension of that.
Pretty much agree but I think that the ban (International and not domestic) will be a lot longer .... ending just before Uruguay's next Copa America commitments.
R
RedZeppelin III
Guest
it still drives me mad that when your player goes away on international duty you struggle to keep in contact or in control of them. You just know he's there with a million fuckwits in his ear when he could really do with speaking to Brendan (he may have but i suspect not) . Uruguay are handling this like numpties and it's making him and us look bad .
Then again maybe we should just stay out of it ,let them handle it and stay quiet until it blows over a little . Well as long as any suspension doesn't impact us .
Then again maybe we should just stay out of it ,let them handle it and stay quiet until it blows over a little . Well as long as any suspension doesn't impact us .
My clock radio woke me at 07.15 this morning to the sound of John Hartson furiously laying in to Luis Suarez on BBC Radio 5 Live - the usual stuff - no ban is long enough etc etc etc.
My mind went to the video of John Hartson kicking Eyal Berkovic in the head on West Ham's training ground. I have tweeted BBC Radio 5 Live pointing out that I would rather have a nibble on the shoulder from Luis than a big kick in the head from John Hartson.
My mind went to the video of John Hartson kicking Eyal Berkovic in the head on West Ham's training ground. I have tweeted BBC Radio 5 Live pointing out that I would rather have a nibble on the shoulder from Luis than a big kick in the head from John Hartson.
Good for you Ports. Wonder what notice they'll take, though having said that I gather that one or two of the broadsheets at least are making a similar kind of argument this morning, so fair play to them for that.
I wonder if Luis Suarez kicked people like that even once.
Any idea which ones? - It would be nice to read something that has a little perspective on this rather than the vapid, hyperbolic, predictable clap trap that seems to be spouting out of every talking head with a soap box to stand on. I can't believe John fucking Hartson has the temerity to wade in! As my Irish buddies would say - Jaysus!!!
Defending Luis can be hard work as he doesn't make it easy for us. However, it does seem to me that the UK media are making a huge issue out of the bite, whereas the foreign media aren't so hysterical. I am hoping that, for all their faults, FIFA won't have the same vindictive attitude to Suarez as the English FA.
This needs to be emphasised. Since Suarez racially abused Evra and bit Ivanovic what happened?
Our commercial deals continue to rise and we were the most watched team in the Premiership.
These bites mean fuck all in the grand scheme of things. They should not affect a decision to keep or sell him withe way.
And everyone knows that in the Dvr era the only advertising people are more than likely to watch is all around live sport.
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