It started with a bite and it ended with a bite. Luis Suarez’s Liverpool career has been bookended by acts of savagery.
Neither came in the colours of the Merseyside club, but controversy was a constant in the Suarez years.
Loved and loathed, idolised and demonised, Suarez departs after coming full circle.
One bite, on PSV Eindhoven’s Otman Bakkal led to his Ajax exit.
Another, on Italy’s Giorgio Chiellini, curtailed his World Cup.
Disgrace is not a deterrent to buyers, as Barcelona’s bid shows.
Liverpool can reflect that, while his character has not changed, his value has increased.
They signed Suarez for £22.8 million (Dh143.7m) and will sell him for more than three times as much.
Their reputation may have suffered during this relationship but they have profited, financially and on the football field.
Suarez helped bring their wilderness years to an end. His legacy comes in the form of a return to the Champions League.
Even if he had stayed, he would have missed their comeback.
Liverpool should take solace in the fact his latest lengthy suspension will not hamper them; the four-month, worldwide ban now will not rule him out of 13 of their fixtures.
They can concentrate instead on spending a windfall. Funded in part by Suarez’s sale, this is shaping up to be the most expensive overhaul in Liverpool’s history.
The task of replacing the irreplaceable will fall to several men.
It is just as well as this is not the 21st-century equivalent of selling Kevin Keegan and signing Kenny Dalglish.
Suarez joined the exclusive band of Liverpool’s outstanding No 7s but, if longevity contributes to legendary status, his stay was too brief to qualify.
Steven Gerrard said the Uruguayan was the finest footballer he played alongside, but the captain ranks above the striker in the Anfield pantheon.
But Suarez’s impact was explosive. Many of his 82 Liverpool goals were memorable, both for their audacity and for the skill with which they were executed.
The range of them, the volleys, the long-range strikes, the sublime solo runs, illustrated the range of his skills.
His capacity to turn sharply at pace enabled him to embarrass opponents at will: they went one way, while Suarez spun another.
While his finishing went from erratic in his first 18 months at Anfield, to the much more clinical – his last 61 Liverpool league games brought 52 goals – his ruthlessness was long apparent in the way he preyed mercilessly on the frail.
Just ask Norwich City, who conceded three hat-tricks to Suarez alone.
The eulogies often camouflaged the extent to which Suarez’s demolition jobs were weighted towards the weak.
Fifteen of his 31 league goals last season came against the bottom four and none against the top four.
Within that, however, it is worth remembering that Suarez catapulted Liverpool into the elite quartet and that his tally was not artificially inflated by penalties.
While he did not score often enough against the best, he could destroy them.
A personal nomination for his best Liverpool display, certainly against high-calibre opposition, would be the day in March 2011 when Manchester United lost 3-1 at Anfield.
Dirk Kuyt got a close-range hat-trick, but Suarez was the scourge of Sir Alex Ferguson’s side.
United figure prominently in any account of Suarez’s time at Anfield.
His racial abuse of Patrice Evra, like his bite on Branislav Ivanovic, represents a stain on his CV.
They are reasons why Suarez has polarised opinions like few others, distorting perceptions of “the Liverpool Way” and, indeed, Liverpool Football Club as a whole.
Frankly, some made fools of themselves attempting to justify the unjustifiable.
Defenders, too, looked foolish trying to stop the unstoppable. They may breathe a sigh of relief now he is gone.
Suarez, rather than Robbie Fowler, Michael Owen or Fernando Torres, was Liverpool’s most brilliant striker of the Premier League years.
Like Owen and Torres, he has decided Anfield acclaim is not enough.
While he has also family reasons for moving to Catalonia, there is something sad about that.
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