Luis Suárez: From Villain To Perfect Team Guy

LONDON — One man doesn’t make a team, but a team can sometimes find it impossible to replace one player.

Luis Suárez and Liverpool are examples of that.

When Suárez led Liverpool’s forward line two seasons ago, the Reds ran rampant in English soccer. The club finished as the runner-up in the Premier League, a whisker away from its first league title in more than 20 years. Suárez, of course, was one player among 11, but his hunger for chasing down lost causes and turning plenty of them into game-winning goals made him the catalyst for the team’s performance.

After that season — and a World Cup in which he turned from hero to villain — Suárez engineered his departure from Liverpool. He had a buyout clause in his contract, and Barcelona paid it, spending $92 million to bring him to Spain.

It would be four months before he could play for anyone because he was banned for biting the shoulder of Giorgio Chiellini during Uruguay’s World Cup encounter with Italy. However, making up for lost time, Suárez ended up winning five trophies with Barcelona in 2015.

It is a team on which he scores almost as often as he plays. A hat trick and an assist by Suárez helped Barcelona to thrash Athletic Bilbao, 6-0, on Sunday, and he is the leading goal scorer in Spain this season.

Yet he is now more of a team player. How could he be anything else, when he shares the attack with Lionel Messi and Neymar on a team that includes Andrés Iniesta, one of the most exquisite players the game has ever seen?

Messi has insisted that winning the Ballon d’Or five times in his career has come down to the team he plays for.

It is a team on which Suárez is still very much the newbie. New, but he also brings a new dynamic.

The Suárez of Barcelona is the same foraging, tenacious and confident character that he was at Liverpool (and before that at clubs in the Netherlands and Uruguay). He works hard, has an instinct to go for the jugular and possesses a scoring habit that can at times make him appear greedy, at other times sharing.

“Luis deserved to be at the Ballon d’Or with Cristiano, Neymar and me,” Messi said in Zurich when he received the trophy as soccer’s top player earlier this month. “He is the best No.9 in the world today.”

For the record, Messi is a No.10, Cristiano Ronaldo wears No.7, and Neymar No.11.

The numbers do not define them. Messi is the world’s most complete player, in any role he chooses. Ronaldo and Neymar strike mainly from the wings.