da brdice： Liverpool forward Luis Suarez has revealed that he would be open to a move to an ‘elite’ club in the summer, but in an industry that only asks loyalty of those possessing enough quality to be demanded of it, does he owe the club anything? Or to put it more pertinently, would he be doing them a favour if he stayed for one more season?
da heads bet： For the sake of brevity, considering that Suarez is entering the peak of his career, the longer he continues to play for a side not even in the Champions League, let alone competing seriously on a consistent basis for honours, the Uruguayan could be said to be sacrificing the best years of his career out of affection for his current club.
The 26-year-old told AFP on Wednesday: “You never know in football. A player’s ambition is always there, the ambition of wanting to play in elite teams is always there. I’m in a world-class team, an elite team like Liverpool. And if another team comes around with more prospects of competing in international club competitions games, which is willing to have [me], they are welcome. We would talk to the club, we would see if I want to go, if I don’t want to go.”
Describing a club which hasn’t been and isn’t likely to get into the top four this season as ‘world-class’ is clearly a very flattering take on events, given that Suarez is likely the club’s only truly world-class talent at the moment. Protestations that he is happy on Merseyside sound genuine, especially since he has a young family that have settled well in the area, but when it comes to the rest of the country, the mercurial playmaker is something of a pantomine villain and the whole circus that surrounds him must be tiresome to say the least.
That is not to say that he doesn’t at least owe Liverpool a sense of gratitude for the way they stuck by him during the whole Patrice Evra racism scandal; the club’s position effectively cost Kenny Dalglish his job at the end of last season and his eight-game ban derailed what at one point was a promising league campaign. He has made his bed and he must lie in it, but the club have staked a lot of goodwill and capital on him and he knows it. Even in a game where loyalty is little more than a word, Suarez should at least acknowledge that his reputation has damaged the image of the club to a global audience and there’s a sense that as much as his goals have repaid some of the debt, only giving back a year of his time when he could be at a bigger, better-equipped club will be seen as penance for his actions.
Loyalty is a strange thing in football – fans always demand it of talented players, but when someone on the fringes of the club professes his commitment to the cause, it is dismissed as self-interest, or when a player the club is actively trying to sell signals his intention to ‘honour’ his contract, which he is well within his rights to, he is portrayed as a money-grabber, draining the life-force from the club and a representation of everything that is wrong with modern football. The currency of loyalty is almost always interlinked with ability and we only demand it of those that have some, otherwise it’s simply a case of ‘thank you, there’s the door’. Any other position on the matter is just deeply hypocritical and ignorant.
[cat_link cat=”liverpool” type=”list”]
When managing director Ian Ayre went on BBC ‘Breakfast News’ yesterday morning under the smokescreen of talking about the women’s game to defend a transfer story, there was more than a hint of emotional blackmail behind his attempt to deny the quotes as being misrepresented: “Yeah, absolutely, there’s a story about Luis every week. It’s in his local language. We did a new four-year deal with Luis last summer, he’s had a fantastic season for Liverpool and it doesn’t surprise us every day when he’s linked with a move or he’s asked to comment on it and he makes a comment that gets taken in different directions.
“We love Luis being at Liverpool, our fans love Luis being at Liverpool and he loves being at Liverpool and we fully expect him to be there next season. He’s spoken to me and he’s spoken to the manager and he’s been quoted very recently, actually saying about how happy he is. He’s said he wants to be a part of the team and that’s what we expect. We signed that new contract on the basis that he would continue to provide for us.”
The tone of the debate has been set, the club will be loath to sell Suarez as he’s an essential part of their plans to crack the top four; the sheer level of self-interest hangs heavy in the air. Could the club reject an offer in the region of £40m? Everything we’ve learned about FSG so far tells us they’re pragmatic businessman prone to a bungling, and it’s doubtful they’d simply reject it out of hand, despite the protestations from fans and manager alike. Losing Suarez would signal a lack of ambition just as it did when Arsenal sold Robin van Persie to Manchester United last summer.
Nevertheless, the longer Suarez continues to ply his trade in the Europa League, the more it seems like the club are holding the player back to achieve their own aims and there’s a certain amount of desperation about the club’s position at the moment. The power all rests with the player. They know it, he knows it and everyone else knows it. Suarez is not a local born and bred academy product, nor does he in all reality owe the club a thing; he is paid to do a job and he is doing it extremely well, instead the brunt of the matter will focus on an emotional response.
If I had to place money on it, I’d bet that Suarez stays one more season at Anfield before leaving just before the 2014 World Cup. It’s a compromise position that could quite easily be negotiated after he receives his bumper pay packet at the end of the season just like Thierry Henry did at Arsenal before leaving for Barcelona. The game is set, the players all know which moves they’re going to make and both will have danced this awkward dance before, the only irritating thing is that it’s going to be dragged out over the course of a few months before reaching its inevitable conclusion. Next year may not be Liverpool’s, but it will be Suarez’s last at Anfield.
[opinion-widget op width=”full”]