Criticism of Luis Suarez and Barcelona reeks of bitter jealousy and sour grapes
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Updated 11/03/2017 at 01:46 GMT
Barcelona and Luis Suarez have encountered some nonsensical criticism following their miraculous 6-1 win over Paris Saint-Germain, but they are guilty only of being streetwise, writes Desmond Kane.
Barcelona's Luis Suarez reacts after being fouled by Paris Saint-Germain's Marquinhos as Paris Saint-Germain's Thiago Silva gesture.
Image credit: Eurosport
Imagine you are in Luis Suarez’s position representing FC Barcelona on Wednesday evening.
There are four minutes of added time remaining, your side need two goals to reach the Champions League quarter-finals and you are running through on goal with 95,000 home fans praying for a miracle.
You are in a foot race with the Paris Saint-Germain defender Marquinhos for a loose ball over the top that you may or may not make when you feel the defender's elbow make contact with you.
There is a decision to be made: do you opt to stay upright knowing the ball is likely to reach the PSG goalkeeper Kevin Trapp before you can hit it? Or do you go to ground after contact is made?
Being a world-class predator who plays on the shoulder of bruising, combative centre-halves for large swathes of games, Suarez (probably) opted to go ground, take his chances with fate and see what the match official made of it.
It was a gamble for Suarez to fall over because the penalty had to be awarded by the German referee Deniz Aytekin, and then had to be converted. The referee blew his whistle for the penalty, and Neymar duly kept his composure to finish.
The rest, as they say is history, as Sergi Roberto completed the astonishing 6-1 win with the final meaningful kick of the ball while PSG continued to reel from the penalty call moments earlier.
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Barcelona's Argentinian forward Lionel Messi celebrates Barcelona's midfielder Sergi Roberto's goal
Image credit: AFP
These are decisions that make football, that make sport so debatable. It was not conclusive that Suarez dived, just a viewpoint.
What has left a sour taste in the mouth is the wailing and gnashing of teeth attempting to portray Suarez and by extension Barcelona as cheats. It is a blatant attempt to detract from what has been officially ratified as the greatest recovery in the history of the Champions League, football and arguably sport.
Barcelona are not cheats, they are merely aware of the fundamentals of modern football that will always favour attackers rather than defenders. This is a mindset handed down by FIFA to match officials to encourage goals in the game.
It is why Barca will always court controversy because they are rarely forced to defend in numbers the way PSG found themselves pressed back into their own box, a phenomenon that never afflicts them in France. PSG simply were not prepared for the gathering storm that awaited them at the Camp Nou.
Some call Suarez a diver when a more objective opinion would merely call him streetwise.
The Uruguayan forward is an easy target due to his previous, but the moralising over Suarez is enough to make you vomit when working the rules to suit your team has always been part of football from time immemorial. Like house buying, it is all okay if you are on the right side of the fence.
It is important to acknowledge that there was contact with Marquinhos and Suarez. The elbow and arm of the player clearly comes onto the forward's shoulder from the hopeful ball over the top by Messi's quarterback pass from deep.
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Luis Suarez
Image credit: Reuters
It is also vital to acknowledge that grappling, blocking and holding by defenders off the ball is just as much a blight on the game as diving. Some defenders look at the forward rather than the ball at corner kicks. How is this positive for the game?
"Defenders who do not attack the ball, but face their opponents and focus on stopping..that’s not football," said the former Arsenal defender Martin Keown in a Daily Mail column .
Defenders are checking, blocking, holding, grappling, using force to foul their opponents and too often referees are allowing it to take place..it's blatant fouling and deserves punishment. If you are obsessed more with stopping your opponent than winning the ball, that cannot be right.
Before the referee blew for the penalty, Marquinhos was looking at Suarez and not the ball. Whether or not there was enough to go down is a moot point, but the fact that the PSG defender made contact with Suarez leaves the decision open to interpretation.
It gave the referee a decision to make, and in real time he saw it as a penalty. The assistant line judges behind the goal did not disagree.
"In this case, I don't know if it was a clear mistake or not," said the FIFA president Gianni Infantino.
But in future, when there are clear mistakes, this will be corrected by the video assistant referee so we can make sure decisive matches are not decided by mistakes made in good faith by the referee.
Would he have made a different call if he had time to study a TV replay? Maybe, or maybe not.
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As long as referees are without technology, such incidents will always be part of the game. Human error merely adds to the theatre of sport.
What goes around comes around. A few weeks ago, the Barcelona defender Gerard Pique berated a referee for awarding Real Madrid a contentious penalty in a 3-2 win at Villarreal.
"We already know about Pique's world, where everything's a plot against him," said the Real Madrid captain Sergio Ramos.
The referees have a difficult job, we have to try and make them more comfortable. Referees sometimes give you and others take away, but you have to be prepared for everything.
PSG captain Thiago Silva lamented the penalty decision after Suarez had earlier been booked for simulation. In his private moments, Silva will know the obvious truth.
He will know the goal was eminently preventable if he and Marquinhos had been correctly positioned when the ball was played over the top. They were out of position, and that is where the problems began and ended for PSG, not with the award of the penalty.
The ball came down with snow on it. An organised defence would have read the pass to head clear rather than be done by a ball over the top? Should Trapp have done better by coming from his line quicker? If he had been a sweeper keeper he would have cleaned out Suarez and Marquinhos to collect the loose ball before there was any chance of further damage.
There is also the issue of personal interest attached to some of the hysterical criticism of Barcelona being part of some shadowy conspiracy theory. If Suarez had been playing for Liverpool and this had occurred against Manchester United in the closing moments, would the Liverpool fans care?
Of course not. If Suarez is playing for your club, you would only be viewing the match through large Luis Suarez-loving glasses.
Finally, remember there was no love lost between both sets of players. Barcelona were smarting when PSG celebrated their 4-0 flogging of them in the first leg three weeks ago.
It was hugely embarrassing for the Barca coach Luis Enrique, who opted to announce plans to quit after that obliteration. It was even more infuriating for them when the former Real Madrid winger Angel Di Maria began pressing his finger to his lips after Edinson Cavani had scored what appeared to be the away goal needed to settle matters as they trailed 3-1.
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Referee Deniz Aytekin Barça-PSG
Image credit: Eurosport
In the heat of the moment, a great team will play on the edge to try to turn the match in their favour. Which is what Barcelona did on Wednesday. If PSG had made it through, they would have been treated like returning heroes, but they were not good enough because they self-imploded.
Yet there seems to be plenty of bitter jealousy out there in traditional and social media towards Barcelona because they are a supreme side. Suggesting the referee wanted Barcelona to win is nonsense. They were guilty of nothing greater than gamesmanship.
Barca deserve all the plaudits for their insatiable appetite to win. It was not only a moment in sport, it was a moment in time.
It deserves proper respect and recognition, not to be confronted by bitterness, paranoia and claims of hyperbole enveloping the win which ironically are also hyperbole.
Yet it sums up the times in which we live when such remarkable success is treated like wrongdoing.
Desmond Kane
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