In Defence Of Luis Suarez

 Over the last week or so I've been reading more negative press and negative comments about our Uruguayan number seven. His crime? Being booed at the Olympics. He really hasn't done anything wrong or anything controversial and yet the crowd reaction to him has generated more talk about him, 99% of it unfavourable. There's quite a lot to mention here, so where to start?

 I'll begin with events in Cardiff, where the GB fans (more on which later, if I don't write too much on Suarez...) jeered the Uruguayan anthem. Luis Suarez was fined and banned for eight matches for calling Patrice Evra 'negro' during a Premier League game, despite his protestations of innocence. Now I could be wrong about this, but isn't showing your dislike of a player found guilty of racial abuse by booing and jeering through a national anthem about as ironic as you can get? I'm sure many Uruguayans will have been just as offended by this as Evra was by anything Suarez said, especially at a tournament such as the Olympics which traditionally uses sport to unite nations, rather than to create tension between countries. again this is only personal opinion, but once you've disrespected a national anthem so vociferously and publicly you lose any moral highground when it comes to matters of race.

 Suarez was subjected to a great deal of abuse at Old Trafford when Uruguay played there last week, which isn't surprising and certainly isn't anything out of the ordinary for football. I don't think there is anything wrong with the Man Utd  supporters having a go at the Liverpool player, that's just football rivalry and without it our game would suffer. What will be interesting though is the reaction of the Man Utd fans to Rio Ferdinand this coming season. As soon as the Suarez affair came to prominence there was a large number of Man Utd fans jumping straight onto their high horses - 'he should be sacked', 'we don't want that in our game', 'it's like the KKK at Anfield'. Generally making the most of the opportunity presented to portray all things Liverpool as racist and unacceptable. Now Rio Ferdinand has made his own racial slur and, unlike with Suarez, there is very real proof of what Ferdinand said. He has denied his FA charge of improper conduct but I've no idea how he can possibly justify that, he quite clearly used a racially offensive term and found it funny, and then tried to defend it by saying it was a term for someone who was being fake, which as a defence is up there with 'he was eating the grass'. The Manchester United supporters who were so outraged that Suarez used the word 'negro' have now got two choices, either be consistent with their views and boo Rio Ferdinand until he is forced out of their club, or defend their own player and prove that they were never really bothered about the racial aspect of the Suarez/Evra saga, they just used it as an excuse to have a go at their most hated rivals.

 Another justification for Suarez' treatment by fans at the Olympics has been that he cheats and dives and moans at officials all the time. I'm not going to say he is an angel and this is all false, but it is greatly exaggerated. Without getting nasty about it, I would honestly like supporters of any other team to get in to comment on here if they feel their team has ever lost a match as a result of Suarez cheating. Incidentally if anybody wants to know what a real piece of play acting looks like, click HERE or HERE. Suarez was accused of diving against West Brom to win a penalty, when if you look at it it was one of the latest tackles you'll ever see and it was a blatant penalty. He was accused of diving to win a penalty against Arsenal at Anfield, and while he did go down under slight contact, there was a definite impact on his shin from the Arsenal goalkeeper, and before any Arsenal fans or staff make any sort of a deal over it, they should remember the story of a Croatian striker named Eduardo. The player who took a clear dive against Celtic in the Champions League and rightly got a ban for it, so what did his club do? They appealed the ban. And which club was this? A clue is they play in London and they're nicknamed the Gunners. What I'm basically saying is get your own house in order before you go moaning about other people, and if you want to be strong on issues like this, maybe you you should lead by example. The three players I saw in the Premier League last season most guilty of diving and play acting were Ashley Young, Gareth Bale and Nani, two of them were eligible to play for Team GB and I wonder if they would have been booed as loudly if they had been called up by Stuart Pearce.

 The moaning at officials accusation has a little foundation, he regularly asks for free kicks when he feels he has been fouled, but he's far from the only player who does this. Robbie Savage spent years moaning at referees, as has Craig Bellamy. Ryan Giggs has made a career of asking referees for decisions that blatantly should go against his team, and who can't recall countless occasions of Wayne Rooney or Roy Keane running full pelt at match officials, frothing at the mouth demanding their team are awarded something. It's not something we want in football but we need to stamp it out from everyone, not just choose one player and hammer him alone for it.

 Luis Suarez was also the played 'fouled' by Jack Rodwell in the Goodison derby last season, resulting in a red card for Rodwell. This should never have been a sending off but it was purely the mistake of the official and not a result of Suarez doing anything untoward. And the Evertonians who saw fit to blame the Uruguayan for this obviously forgot Steven Pienaar's ridiculous challenge on Mascherano at Anfield for which he was only booked, or Fellaini's two footed jump/stamp on Kyrgiakos in the same game, for which the Greek was the one who saw red!

 Luis Suarez' pre Liverpool action for Uruguay against Ghana in the world cup has also been brought up when he handled on the goal line in the last minute of extra time to prevent a goal. Ghana missed the resulting penalty and Uruguay went through in the shoot out. It certainly wasn't a sporting action by Suarez, but if you asked any manager or supporter if they would want their own player to do the same you would get a unanimous 'yes'. Phil Neville did the same thing in the last minute of a Merseyside Derby, denying Lucas a last minute winner and taking the sending off instead. Dirk Kuyt stepped up and scored the subsequent penalty so the incident is often forgotten, but anybody saying non-English players bring this kind of thing into the game is wrong. And if somebody did the same thing for England in a major tournament you can bet your life the English media would support them and thank them, and certainly not condemn them.

 I think the main reason for the treatment of Suarez is clearly the whole incident with Patrice Evra, but I find it hard to believe John Terry, Rio Ferdinand or Emmanuel Frimpong will face the same levels of hatred for their indiscretions of a similar nature (I also find it hard to believe the FA will actually have the bottle to find either Terry or Ferdinand guilty). Suarez never really had any strong proof against him, only one man's word. Terry has been caught on camera clearly calling some one a 'f**king black c*nt', Ferdinand quite clearly and openly claimed 'choc ice, hahahahaha, that's a classic' and Frimpong called a Spurs fan a 'yid' on a website for all to see. The evidence against all three is clear to see and while I don't particularly want players to get abuse from supporters it would be nice to feel Suarez isn't getting special treatment purely because he plays for Liverpool. for what it's worth I have a little sympathy for Frimpong, I think if a random stranger contacts you on Twitter and says they have prayed that you break both your arms and legs then you should be allowed to say whatever you like in response, but maybe that's just me.

 Finally I'd like to change the subject a little on to something a bit more positive. When England play in the Euros or at a World Cup it seems there are as many people who want to see them lose as their are want to see them win, but with the GB football team in the Olympics it feels like everybody has backed them and that's exactly as it should be. I think the main reason some people (myself included sometimes) want to see England fail is they can't bring themselves to cheer for certain players like Rooney or Terry or Gerrard, depending on who they support. The lack of big names to dislike in the GB team seems to have helped people to get behind the players who were there and I've really enjoyed what I've seen of Team GB over the last week or two. And it also goes to show you can add the other home nations to England, but penalties are penalties and we just can't score enough in a shoot out to win...