Cannibal at play

He does it again. The Uruguayan footballer faces expulsion for biting an Italian defender

A day before Luis Suárez, the Uruguayan forward who plays for Liverpool, was named the Football Supporters’ Federation Player of the Year for 2013, and his name was doing the rounds for the PFA Player of the Year, which he eventually won, the newspaper Toronto Star made a prediction. It wrote, ‘He will do something insane at this summer’s World Cup—mark it down… Eventually, he’ll punch a baby.’

Well he didn’t quite punch a baby in the Fifa World Cup. But he did something equally bizarre. He bit a player. At the time of going to press, Suárez may miss the remainder of his country’s World Cup campaign. FIFA has started disciplinary proceedings against him for biting the Italian defender Giorgio Chiellini. Under its rules, he can be banned for up to two years or 24 games.

If it happens, it could prove disastrous for Uruguay’s campaign. In a group where hardly anyone gave it a chance, Suárez single-handedly changed its team’s fortunes. After their defeat to Costa Rica, a game he missed, nobody expected Uruguay to withstand the English and Italian firepower. But Suárez engineered England’s collapse, sending the much-fancied side home with his two goals. But now that his team has qualified for the knock-out round, it is likely to miss its most valuable player.

Talented as he is, Suárez is a bewildering individual. He dives and cheats. He bites opponents—he’s done it for the third time on record. He racially abuses players. And even though he gets warnings and bans, he is back on the field unreformed. When he made his international debut against Colombia in 2007, he was sent off in the 85th minute of the game. In the 2010 World Cup, he denied Africa its first ever representative in a World Cup semi-final when he stopped a goal-bound header with his hand. It would have been Ghana’s winning goal in extra time, but they missed the resulting penalty and Uruguay eventually won a penalty shootout. Asked about his conduct in that game, Suarez had said, “Mine is the real ‘Hand Of God’. I made the save of the tournament.”

In high-pressure games, one expects a few lapses. But it is either an incredibly stupid or short-tempered person who will behave in the manner Suárez did in the Uruguay-Italy match. Even if he escapes the referee’s eye, as he did, millions will catch it on TV, and so will FIFA officials. And the inexplicable thing is that he has already been penalised in the past for biting opponents. In 2010, after he bit PSV Eindhoven’s Otman Bakkal, he served a seven-match ban, and in 2013, when he bit Chelsea defender Branislav Ivanovic, he got a 10-game ban.

Football is an intense physical sport, where acts of aggression, unpardonable as they are, do occur. Players head-butt opponents, they punch, they kick. But who bites? Last time someone saw a player bite in a high-profile game was back in 1997 when boxer Mike Tyson bit off a chunk of Evander Holyfield’s ear. Suárez’s latest bite made Holyfield tweet, ‘I guess any part of the body is up for eating’.

Following Suárez’s bite of Ivanovic last year, BBC tried to fathom such behaviour. A sports psychologist, Dr Thomas Fawcett, told the channel that anger management therapy would have little effect on Suárez. “It’s in the man,” he said, “I would think that in five years’ time, if there was a certain nerve hit or chord rung with Suarez in a different situation, he would react in the same way.” Well, a year is all it took.

expulsionItalyLuis SuarezUruguayan footballer