"It feels like Uruguay has been thrown out of the World Cup," the Uruguayan FA president Wilmar Valdez said.
There is nothing like a proportionate response and, indeed, that was nothing like a proportionate response to Luis Suarez's expulsion from the tournament.
Uruguay could indeed be thrown out of the World Cup on Saturday, but only in the sense that eight teams will be eliminated in the round of 16. Colombia could eject them. They might be Uruguay’s nemesis. They ought to be their role models.
For more World Cup stories, visit our dedicated microsite – thenational.ae/worldcup.
Colombia, too, were deprived of a star striker. Radamel Falcao's World Cup was ended before it began, the Monaco forward's knee injury ruling him out. The response of his teammates has been admirable in the extreme. They won three group games and, while it was one of the weaker pools, they did so in such style to suggest this could be Colombia's greatest team.
Certainly, James Rodriguez, relocated from the left wing to the No 10 position, is staking his claim to be the player of the tournament; it was an award won by a Uruguayan, Diego Forlan, four years ago. Juan Cuadrado, the electric right winger, is another player peaking when it matters. The 38-year-old centre-back Mario Yepes ought to be in decline but has not looked the liability age would suggest.
Yepes against Suarez would have been an intriguing battle. Instead, the Colombian captain faces Edinson Cavani. The all-consuming nature of Suarez means his sidekick, despite being the eighth-most expensive player in footballing history, has been overlooked. Cavani has contributed to that; his sole goal came from the penalty spot in the tame, Suarez-less defeat to Costa Rica. He sacrificed himself to man-mark Steven Gerrard intelligently and diligently. Now, in a side shorn of Suarez, Cavani assumes top billing again.
Uruguay’s wretched performance against Costa Rica served only to illustrate Suarez’s importance. So, too, his two-goal, match-winning salvo on his return against England. The scrappy win against Italy occurred without him making an impact on the ball – although it is one of unanswerable questions if, as Diego Godin’s decider came a couple of minutes after he bit Giorgio Chiellini, Uruguay would have triumphed had Suarez been sent off. And, thus far, they have rarely resembled the side that reached the semi-finals in 2010 and won the Copa America 12 months later.
Forlan has been dropped. It may be just as well that Diego Lugano, the ageing captain, has been injured, because he looks a liability. Maxi Pereira, the accomplished right-back, did Uruguay’s reputation damage even before Suarez did with his hack at Costa Rica’s Joel Campbell.
And yet, misplaced as Uruguay’s sense of injustice is, ludicrous as it was to see fans gathering at Montevideo airport to give Suarez a hero’s welcome, deluded as Lugano was in his complaints about his colleague’s ban (“We would all like a more just world but, quite simply, that world doesn’t exist”), there is the chance this will galvanise Uruguay.
The "garra charrua", the legendary Uruguayan fighting spirit, has characterised their finest teams. That full-blooded commitment has led many to overstep the mark, even if both the scale and the nature of Suarez's offending separate him from those guilty of X-rated challenges.
Now, as a siege mentality is developing, as Uruguay believe that world football is turning against them, there are contrasting scenarios.
Either they will rally and progress, defying the odds and their own recent form or, as in 1986, they will compound shame with shocking behaviour. The 1986 team, one of the dirtiest in World Cup history, prompted Alex Ferguson, the Scotland manager then, to say: "It's not just a part of football, it's the whole bloody attitude of the nation. You can see that attitude there. The whole thing. They have no respect for other people's dignity. It's a disgrace what they did. Their behaviour turns the game into a complete farce."
Twenty-eight years on, there are similarities in the Suarez affair. And yet, Uruguay being Uruguay, they might just progress.
sports@thenational.ae
Follow us on Twitter at @SprtNationalUAE
