Luis Suarez: The wizard of flaws

By Shamya Dasgupta

I dreamt this. I'm enjoying this moment, because of all I suffered, the criticism I received.

So, there you go."

Luis Suarez isn't the most articulate person in the world, especially when speaking through sobs of joy. But Suarez doesn't need oratory skills as long as he can do what he does with a football.

On Thursday night, against England, he was god. That speech, for all its lack of flair, summed up those 90 minutes as well as possible.

Indeed, Suarez was the sum of those 90 minutes in Sao Paulo.

Back in 2010, at the World Cup in South Africa, the then 23-year-old was already something of a wunderkind. And when he stationed himself on his own goal line against Ghana and fisted away a goal-bound ball, I was a fan. Not because I think winning at all cost is cool, but because I could see what winning meant to the youngster.

Suarez walked off and waited at the touchline to see how the spot kick panned out.

Asamoah Gyan missed. Suarez looked like he didn't care that he was not going to be a part of the story any more. He had done all he could to keep his team in the game.

A move to the big time was only to be expected.

Since then, while at Liverpool, Suarez has been banned for racially abusing Patrice Evra and for biting Branislav Ivanovic. In 2014, he also became the first non-European to be namedthe Professional Footballers' Association (PFA)Player of the Year. To the PFA, Suarez's failingsdidn't matter.

Should they have?

It's a tricky one. Taking a political stance against someone you don't like is easy.

When it comes to, say, Woody Allen, it's tougher. If Suarez is mighty good at his main job, should it matter that he has a racist charge against him? At the same time, is it okay to forgive him only because he is one of the best footballers of his generation? To me, the answer to that last question can only be an unambiguous 'no'.

But for 90 minutesagainst England, it was hard to remember all that. He was on the pitch less than a month after keyhole surgery on his left knee. He was playing England, the country he makes his living in but also the country where he 'suffered'. The way I saw it, he could only have gone two ways: glory or disgrace. Not defeat but disgrace – I was certain that if he didn't win, Suarez would do something despicable.

But there was a sense of inevitability to the way things panned out. The first goal was a masterclass; it was as spectacular as a simple matter of beating the offside trap can be. The second was all about being at the right place and finishing not clinically, but with a roar. It wasn't the punch that adds to the points. It was the punch that causes the eyes to go blurry before the arms go limp by the side of the body and then the victim falls like a felled tree. It was scoring a goal in lumberjack style.

Oscar Tabarez, the Uruguay coach, said afterwards, "If this was a movie, people probably couldn't have wished for a better storyline – at least in Uruguay." For now, let the good outweigh the bad then.

The author is Senior Editor with Wisden India