In Defense of Luis Suárez

Luis Suárez is my hero.  Not because he did the right thing, I'm pretty sure the guy has never done the right thing in his life, but because he did the only thing.  At least, the only thing he knew how to.  I'm not referring to Tuesday's repeat incidence of dental assault on Italian defender Giorgio Chiellini, or rather I'm not referring to that exclusively. 

                Everything Suárez has ever done, whether heroic or villainous, has been unbridled and pure Suárez.  The good guy and bad guy roles were just molds that we tried to fit onto him.  And he has certainly been cast into both roles multiple times.  But he has always been the same ball of reckless energy that burst onto the scene all those years ago with Ajax, dazzling us with his world class finishing ability and charming us with his boyish passion for the sport of football. 

                His feats, whether good or bad, have a legendary quality to them.  He led Uruguay to victory over Ghana in the 2010 World Cup with the second most infamous intentional handball in the tournament's history(the top spot must always be held by the maestro Maradona, who actually defended Suárez this week) just as surely as he felled England with his two goals in 2014's edition.  He has given us the most spectacular goal scoring campaigns this side of the Messi-Ronaldo duumvirate, but those are matched by his hat trick of three bites on opposing players without being carded in any of those games.  I don't think any player in any sport has gotten away with that kind of flagrant and violent assaults on other players with such regularity since the epidemic of unpunished sucker punches from the 1970s American Basketball Association.  It should also be noted that in two of those three matches, Suárez's team went on to score a crucial goal to gain the result it needed. 

                So maybe Suárez is secretly the world's best footballer as well as its most insidious criminal.  In that moment when he chomped down on the shoulder of Chiellini, he became the man of the match just the same as if he had scored the deciding goal.  Suddenly, a terrible match full of pitiful offense, plentiful non-oral foul play from men on both sides(ironically, Suárez was one of the few key players NOT to get carded), and disappointment from fans awaiting the high-profile match up was entirely forgotten, forever washed away in a tide of Suárez vampire memes and incredulous head shakes from Ruud Van Nistelroy. 

                But his luck may have finally run out.  He can't help his team if he can't play, and FIFA's ruling ended Suárez's best chance at potentially capturing the game's greatest prize.  Uruguay's suddenly toothless offense was never going to cut it against Colombia, but thankfully the brilliance of young James Rodriguez prevented the Suárez storyline from completely overshadowing the match in the same way it had in the bout against Italy. 

                In that instance, we made Suárez bigger than the game.  Just the same as we did the first two times(I'm still giddy that we could see one player bite another and hear "Not again" as the first reaction of commentator Jon Champion), or the time when he racially abused Manchester United defender Patrice Evra.  He paid his fines, served his suspensions, and ultimately came back to play one of the most dominant seasons of English football in recent history.  He was one heroic run at this World Cup away from a clean slate, total forgiveness from the world's football populace.  Of course, that really says more about us as fans and observers than it does about Luis Suárez.  We went the other direction: we made the game, and the results he was getting in it, bigger than the man who was playing it. 

                Put simply, it's more fun to watch a player play his best than to ruminate on his past transgressions just the same as it is more appealing to point the magnifying glass on the same player at the moment of his transgression than to explore a few moments of otherwise mundane sport that will ultimately be forgotten.  Suárez has allowed us to do both of those things throughout his career.  And that is why, for better or worse, I love Luis Suárez.  Players like him allow us to make sports be about what we want them to be in any given moment.  The ecstasy of the game at its most beautiful and the hedonism of it at its ugliest.