Luis Suarez is considered by many Liverpool fans to be the club’s best striker of the Premier League era but on Wednesday night he returns to Anfield seeking to fire Atletico Madrid to a notable victory in the Champions League.
Of course, Mohamed Salah’s increasing brilliance has staked a strong claim for that crown but, wherever he ranks in the list of Liverpool strikers, the Kop know an in-form Suarez still can inflict damage on any side.
He is the Reds’ fifth highest-scoring forward of the Premier League era with 69 goals in 110 games between 2011-14 and, at 34 years of age, he is showing no signs of slowing down with eight goals for Atletico already this season.
No-one needs much reminding about the Uruguay striker’s stellar career, having won six top-flight titles, a Champions League trophy and four Copa Del Reys during his time in Europe that has also taken in spells at Groningen, Ajax and Barcelona.
He has also had his fair share of controversies, including punching the ball off the line to deny Ghana victory against Uruguay in the 2010 World Cup quarter-finals, biting three opponents in his career, and being given an eight-match ban for racially abusing Patrice Evra.
Nominated again for the Ballon d’Or this year, BBC Sport takes a look at Suarez’s humble beginnings in Uruguay and how a love story helped him become one of Europe’s most-feared strikers of the past 15 years.
‘Luis told me he would play for Barcelona’Suarez played youth football for Nacional in MontevideoBorn in Salto, Uruguay’s second-most populous city where Manchester United’s Edinson Cavani was also born just 21 days later, Suarez was brought up in a large family with little money – so much so that his mum Sandra once described how they could never afford a pair of football boots for him.
At the age of seven, Suarez moved to Uruguay’s capital Montevideo with his parents and six brothers and played youth football at Urreta before switching to Nacional aged 14.
He impressed in the youth ranks before being given his first-team debut in May 2005 against Junior of Colombia in the Copa Libertadores – but things went far from smoothly for him.
His first goal didn’t come for four months and he missed so many chances his own fans used to jeer him.
Nacional’s then manager Martin Lasarte told BBC Sport: “The character of Luis was very important for all those months without scoring. For Nacional, Suarez was the best youth player of the club, but he had to win a place in the first team due to Bruno Fornaroli and Martin Cauteruccio being the fans’ favourites.
“I had a walk with him one day after training, told him that he was going to sit on the bench in the next match, and I remember Luis got so mad with me. He didn’t understand that was the best for him, but instead of being depressed or furious, he did double training on his own.
“I remember another day Luis told me he was going to play for Barcelona in the future, and he would not surrender until he did it. You know Barcelona in those days was like an impossible dream, but the history is marked – he made it.”
‘He was an animal that wanted more and more’Suarez’s mentality saw him through tough times as a young strikerThanks in no small part to Lasarte’s belief in him and Suarez’s own mental strength, the striker persevered and he ended with 10 goals in 27 matches as Nacional won the Uruguayan title.
Suarez’s former Uruguay and Nacional team-mate Sebastian Abreu, said: “We used to joke to Lasarte ‘when you play Suarez every match, we have to go home, please be kind with us’. The rest of the strikers, when Luis started being in the 11, had to be on the bench or play a few minutes in the rest of the tournament.
“He was like a young boy with a lion mentality. Luis has a such winner’s mentality, that he trained to win in everything he played. One day he came and told me, ‘I know you all are in front of me in the squad, but I will beat you all’.
“He used the tough situations as a motivation for success – nothing was impossible for him even in those days. He never showed off in training, he trained hard many times in secret without us knowing, and got himself prepared to be the best striker of all time in Uruguay.”
Mathias Cardacio, a friend of Suarez’s who played in Nacional’s youth and first team with him, remembers how they used to turn up for training an hour early.
He said: “When we were in Nacional youth, we trained at 6pm, but he looked for me at 5pm to arrive early at the training ground to take shots and penalties before anyone else arrived. That was Luis every step, he wanted to perfect his skills. He didn’t want to lose at anything.
“I remember when we played Huracan for the Nacional youth team and we won 18-0 with 11 goals from Suarez. He couldn’t slow down, he was an animal that always wanted more and more.
“In every competition he wanted to win, whether it was playing football or in cards. He had a competitive thread in his body from when he was a small child.”
Suarez has been with Sofia since the age of 13’He was always thinking of Sofia’Suarez’s exploits in front of goal earned him a move to Dutch top-flight side Groningen in 2006, where his 10 goals in 29 league matches brought a debut for Uruguay and a £6.75m move to Ajax.
The rest is history as, after 111 goals in 159 appearances for the Amsterdam club, he moved to Liverpool for £22.7m in 2011 before heading to Barcelona and then Atletico.
Former Groningen team-mate and fellow Uruguayan Bruno Silva says Suarez’s move to Europe was initially one born out of love, rather than a desire to enhance his professional career.
His girlfriend from the age of 13, and now wife, Sofia moved to Barcelona for family reasons aged just 15 and – while maintaining a long-distance relationship – Suarez was determined to move closer to her.
Silva said: “His decision to come to Europe was always thinking of being near his wife, Sofia, who was in Barcelona. He was determined, playing like a person that has the hunger to get to the top level quickly.”
Diego Forlan, who claimed the 2010 World Cup Golden Boot, added: “In the World Cup in 2010 and in Copa America 2011 where we won the championship, we saw an outstanding version of Suarez, in every training session he wanted to win, to be the best.
“He gets in a bad mood if he loses a simple training match, that is Suarez, the man that has a hunger to win inside.
“Every time Suarez fell with something though, he had Sofia to get himself up, he had that motivation to never disappoint his family. All the things that happened to Luis, from Evra, to being suspended for biting or even with his injuries, he had Sofia with him and that is his support in life”.
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