No matter his lavish exploits on the football pitch, Luis Suarez has been demonised for a variety of reasons during the time he has been employed in England.
He is hardly likely to be welcomed back there at the end of this summer, either, after effectively all but ending the national team’s World Cup campaign single-handedly on Thursday night.
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Uruguay, a country with a population approximately eight times smaller than the homeland of their opponents, are able to say their Liverpudlians are better than England’s. And they only have one of any note.
At times during this game you wondered whether there is anyone left in Liverpool at present, and hoped all the city’s footballers had remembered to turn the lights off when they decamped to Brazil for the summer.
Eight of England’s starting XI are either from the city in England’s north-west or currently employed there. Yet, perhaps inevitably, it was the Salto Scouser who made the difference for the South American side.
Suarez, the Liverpool striker, had been entirely without match practice since having surgery on his knee one month ago. As if that was ever going to matter.
His first half opener from Edinson Cavani’s cross was delicious. It might be besides the real point, but the goal put him one-up in his own personal mini-Merseyside derby, too. Suarez was in between Phil Jagielka and Leighton Baines, each of the blue side of Liverpool, when he stole in to net his header.
Through the same channel, and from an unintended flick on from his Liverpool teammate Steven Gerrard, he settled the win for Uruguay late on.
The pre-match hype had been unequally divided between two players in the lead up to this game. Each delivered something.
While the match-winner was Liverpool’s most lauded import, England’s most effective performer was the city’s most celebrated export.
Wayne Rooney, who has made it all the way from his hometown down the road to Manchester, finally broke his World Cup duck. Yet still he needed numerable chances before getting to that point.
Rooney was playing in his 10th World Cup match, and had never scored in 684 minutes before the game kicked off. For much of the time thereafter, it seemed as though he never would.
He curved an early free-kick just past the paint of the Uruguay post. He somehow contrived to miss from right underneath the crossbar when he attempted to head in a Gerrard free-kick at the far post later in the half.
He then fired at the goalkeeper from point blank range at the start of the second half. If he was getting frustrated, so was the whole of the nation he was representing.
All that aggravation dissipated in the 75th minute when he tapped in an equaliser from six yards out that allowed England to believe again.
The bubble of optimism was punctured soon after by the most predictable source, however, as Suarez struck the winner. Reality had bitten England.
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