Luis Suárez bit a player in the Dutch League in 2010, another in the English League in 2013, and a third in the World Cup in 2014. There you go, clever sanctimonious types: show the world that vampire memes still resonate. I’ll be laughing while Suárez blazes through international football, starting today in Brazil in a World Cup qualifier. As the English can attest, a big Fuck You to the world is coming.

By 2011, Suárez had won Player of the Year in the Dutch league and captained Ajax, its premier club. He got transferred to Liverpool and, in October of that year, Spanish man of letters and model citizen Patrice Evra lodged a complaint against Suárez for racial abuse. In lieu of naked colonialist condescension and transparent grandstanding, that bastion of racial understanding also known as the English Football Association hired English experts on Spanish idioms to guide the evaluation of he-said and video evidence. The FA suspended Suárez eight games for using the world “black” in Spanish (negro), albeit concluding:

[Suárez] did not use the word “negro” in a way that could reasonably be translated as [N-word]. He used the word “negro” because Mr Evra is black
[…]
Mr Evra said in his evidence that he did not think Mr Suarez is a racist [respectively, paragraphs 453(8) and 454 of the 115-page farrago issued by the FA, the .pdf at the bottom of the link.

The FA did not conclude that Suárez said any epithet aside from “black”, nor attached that word to any derogatory term. In a commendable show of rectitude, soon after the FA suspended England captain John Terry four games for calling Anton Ferdinand a “f****** black c***”. To further buttress its hardline stance against racism in English football, here is the FA’s rebuke and call for action after English crowds booed incessantly the Uruguay National Anthem at the football games during the 2012 London Olympics:

 After serving the additional suspension for the second bite, all Suárez did on the 2013-2014 Liverpool season was being the EPL goal leader, with 31 in 33 games. By May 2014, English writers had grudgingly awarded him the Player of the Year award and Suárez underwent a knee operation, just before the start of the World Cup. While rehabbing, his Liverpool teammate and England player Daniel Sturridge stated that England would never resort to cheating, as the Uruguayans did. Suárez missed the first game of the World Cup but played in the second against England. He scored two of the three goals in the game, and almost everyone in Albion had to eat dinner and words through stiff lips. Then the third bite happened.

Suárez apologized and stated that the 2014 World Cup incident will not happen again, which he described as “my colleague Giorgio Chiellini suffer[ing] the physical result of a bite in the collision he suffered with me”. (I bet attorneys penned that; “colleague” and overdetailing that hints at an alternate not-irrational scenario are top dollar bullshit.) FIFA banned Suárez from all of football, even forbidding him to approach any pitch for several months. His nine-game suspension from the Uruguay National Team ends today, and all Suárez has done in the meantime is win every club competition with Barcelona, become an assist machine, and score 0.76 goals per appearance. Yeah, use plenty of “sucks” in your memes, straw man.

 Luis Suárez has stated publicly that he has received anger treatment and that he is not sure on whether he wants to be “cured”. He describes his game as relying on emotion as much as on skill and preparation. Biting is inexcusable, but complacency is unforgivable–that is, if you value competitiveness. Besides, Suárez already served his draconian ban: the only career that has been affected from all of this has been his.

 Yeah, he is my favorite player of everything, and the consensus is that he is a true family man and helluva teammate (ask Steven Gerrard). That red card handball at the goal line in the 2010 World Cup quarterfinals against Ghana did it for me.

The winner would go to the semifinals, a stage no African team had reached at the WC. The game was in South Africa, tied at extra time. Both teams were flushed, and the ball was going in Uruguay’s goalmouth. Stop it with your hand, you will be ejected and will not play the semis, and Ghana gets a penalty. That is a prayer, not a bargain. Asamoah Gyan missed the penalty and Uruguay went to the semis, without Suárez.

 All crimes pinned on Suárez have been on the pitch, and he’s done the time. Now it’s his time. The world has been warned.

Top image via teinteresa.es