Luis Suarez: Taking another bite into ‘any spirit of decency’

'Four years after he denied Ghana ... with a deliberate handball,' writes Ian Hawkey, 'Luis Suarez appeared again to deliberately break the rules and offend any spirit of decency'.

Luis Suarez gestures and puts his hand to his mouth after clashing with Italy's Giorgio Chiellini on Tuesday at the 2014 World Cup. It appeared that during a corner Luis Suarez jumped into Chiellini aShow more

Uruguay are making a habit of many admirable things in international football, writing some stirring storylines, ones with an underdog appeal that will touch hearts and inspire people well beyond the borders of their small country.

They have progressed again in World Cup finals that had seemed to give them a reduced chance of doing so, just as in South Africa.

There, they left France in their wake on the way to the semi-finals. On Tuesday, they finished on top of Italy and England, having defeated both.

They also, for the second successive World Cup, left a bad smell around their vivid celebrations.

Four years after he denied Ghana an all-but-certain place in the semi-finals of the World Cup in South Africa with a deliberate handball on the goalline, Luis Suarez appeared again to deliberately break the rules and offend any spirit of decency, shortly before the decisive moment of the last Group D fixture in Natal on Tuesday.

He appeared to bite Giorgio Chiellini, the Italy defender, who was quick to show the referee Marco Rodriguez indentations in his skin.

“Suarez is a cheat,” Chiellini told Italian television, “but because Fifa wants star players to play in World Cups, he gets away with it. I want to see if they are brave enough to use video evidence for this. The referee saw the mark left by the bite. He didn’t do anything about it.”

Fifa have answered that challenge already by stating they will examine the evidence they have from the various cameras in the Arena das Dunas. Some replays, from a viewpoint behind the players as they went to challenge for a cross into the Uruguay penalty area, showed Suarez jabbing his head down towards Chiellini’s shoulder. He also appeared to be trying to soothe a hurt mouth afterwards.

Suarez has twice been banned for biting opponents, at Ajax and then at Liverpool where his attack on Chelsea’s Branislav Ivanovic earned a 10-match ban.

Cesare Prandelli, who resigned as Italy manager soon after the curtain had been drawn on their World Cup thanks to the 1-0 defeat, referred to that precedent as a reason why Suarez should have been sent off by Rodriguez.

But the Uruguay captain, Diego Lugano, also referred to Suarez’s past offences, to defend his colleague. Lugano is injured and was not on the pitch at the time but said Chiellini had invented the “bite”. Lugano said Suarez was being judged on his reputation, not the actions on Tuesday. He claimed the scars on Chiellini’s shoulders were probably old ones, that Italy were responding without dignity to their loss and that Suarez was innocent.

If this is to be the basis of a defence against a Fifa charge – if Suarez is banned it may well be for long enough to end his World Cup – it sounds ingenious. If Lugano were attempting to close the subject, it will not work.

Suarez is a controversy magnet.

He is a fine footballer, too, very possibly, as Diego Maradona told him two days ago, “one of the top three attacking footballers in the world”. Like Maradona, though, his reputation for sly, ugly acts grows and grows.

Ahead of the Italy-Uruguay game, someone asked Suarez if he thought he might end up as Player of the Tournament. It was an odd question, so early in a World Cup. But we know the answer now: he cannot be.

Even if Fifa do not reduce his activity from here on, the sport cannot commend his foul conduct.

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