Luis Alberto Suárez Díaz. A cheater, a biter, a diver, a genius, a team man. Depending upon which camp you are in, you will have one of these emotions. You will either hate him or love him. There is no middle ground. There has never been…..
I fall in the later camp. I fell in love with this footballer when I saw him stopping a goal with his hand in a world cup match against Ghana. Suarez got a red card. His team advanced to semi final. Not a bad deal, eh ? His journey from streets of Montevideo to Catalan capital has been an inspirational one. I present to you, Dear Readers, this piece of article which tries to find out what lurks inside the surface of this man. Why he bites ? Why he dives ? Why he stops goals with his hand ? Why is Luis Suárez…..Luis Suárez ?
So although there is a case to be made that Suárez cannot be reduced to the bites and headbutts, there is an equally compelling case that those few seconds are the most authentic he’s ever been. Suárez wears many masks, each of them true in the moment he puts them on, but perhaps nothing reveals his truest self like the mask he wears when he’s threatened, for that is the one that shows all the hurt he wants to hide.
Everyone in Uruguay knows what Suárez fought against, and rose above. That’s how he exists in the national consciousness, as someone who fights to win, no matter what. A man doesn’t bite simply because he is crazy. He bites because he is clinging to a new life, terrified of being sucked back into the one he left behind.
The mask came from Central Africa, made by the Songye tribe, famous for its warriors and for what an art broker describes as the most belligerent masks on the continent. The mask is long and oval, streaked with lines representing the scars on the face of a soldier. Some experts believe warriors wore them to hide human weakness, to frighten their enemies. They allowed normal people to trick themselves into being superhuman on the field of battle. Its eyes are blank, dead, creepy to look at for too long. These blanks serve as symbolic pools, a way for the warrior to collect and channel the spirits of the ancestors. The whole metaphor seems a bit much, but Enriquez thought it fit Suárez perfectly
This one is old but I had to share it because it so good. Dear Readers, I hope you enjoy it.
Image Source – ESPN
Needull in a haystack 