Remembering Luis Suarez at Liverpool, the living contradiction, a demon who ‘didn’t give a f***’

The index in Steven Gerrard’s latest autobiography reflects the impact made by Luis Suarez in his three and a half seasons at Anfield. The Uruguayan is mentioned so often in the former Liverpool captain’s story – an epic in itself – that his name fills more than half a page, which is more than Jamie Carragher, Rafael Benítez, Gérard Houllier and Fernando Torres put together.

Suárez’s exit from the club had been fresher than the rest and his exploits – both good and bad – had to a large extent come to define the period of the club. Yet when you read what Gerrard has to say about the Uruguayan the passages intensify, becoming faster, more complex and occasionally outrageous. The admiration leaps from the page.

Suárez’s time at Liverpool is remembered by dismal incidents and special moments. Patrice Evra and Branislav Ivanović would be able to describe the incidents better than Gerrard, who instead is positioned to detail the moments of which there were many more of. This explained why Barcelona were so determined to sign him in July 2014 even though he was suspended for a second biting incident in fourteen months.

Gerrard wrote: “Just as I had done with Barnes and Fowler, I saw something of myself in Suárez. Luis was a street footballer and the same obsession ran through him. Football ruled our lives.”

He loved his passion but most of all he loved his skill. He believed that his presence gave Liverpool the chance to compete against the money and power of both Manchester teams and Chelsea.

Gerrard is regarded as Liverpool’s greatest modern player. With Fernando Torres, Gerrard felt “invincible” but Suárez had more natural talent and willpower.

“In training, and in matches, Luis proved again and again that he was at a different level from everyone else. I tried harder than ever to match him – but Luis was a better footballer than me.”

It reflects how far Liverpool have travelled that the club no longer leans on figures like Gerrard or Carragher, who were more than players. They were sticking plasters when the times were bad: a reminder to fans there were at least some individuals involved at Liverpool who knew what it meant.

Had it not been for Gerrard’s intervention, there’s a chance Suárez could have left Liverpool twelve months earlier than he did. He was serving another ban then and partly because of that, only Arsenal made an offer to sign him, triggering a release clause which they believed would allow him to leave.

When Liverpool rejected their offer of £40million plus a pound John W Henry, Fenway’s principal owner, took to social media, asking: “What are they smoking over there at the Emirates?” It also led to a stand-off and a situation where Suárez was banished from the first team environment. For nearly a fortnight, he trained on his own.

Gerrard and Suárez did not socialise but they sat next to each other in the changing rooms and got along well in a transient sort of way. Suárez was desperate to play Champions League football and Liverpool could not offer that.

Henry and Brendan Rodgers had supposedly given their word that if Liverpool did not finish in the top four at the end of the 2012/13 season, he could go. Liverpool came seventh, behind Everton.

Gerrard feared that without Suárez, Liverpool would suffer another mediocre campaign so he got involved, firing out a text, “Luis, what’s going on here? We need to straighten this out.”

When Suárez told him that he felt as though he’d been lied to, Gerrard suggested a meeting where he made him realise that he would have better options than Arsenal if he continued to give his all for Liverpool. Gerrard then contacted Rodgers and both Rodgers and Suárez insisted Gerrard sat in on the subsequent discussion. Though Rodgers should take some credit for Suárez’s output in the campaign that followed where he scored 31 league goals, it was Gerrard’s diplomacy that made the story possible.

Suárez was described to The Independent last week as a player who “did not give a f***” but this was said an affectionate way, reverent way. There are former youth team players at Liverpool who regularly joined in first team sessions who can remember Suárez giving the same level of commitment as he did in matches even if he was being marked by a teenager.

There were no passengers, no concessions: “He wasn’t afraid to get physical,” one source said. “His effort set the standard and showed everyone else how humble he was. An opponent was there to be got no matter how old he was. His intensity was off the scale.”

This was illustrated when he played a behind closed doors match against Burnley in September 2013, just as he was about to return to first team action after his first biting ban. The friendly finished in a 0-0 draw but there was nothing friendly about it for Suárez who took the game so seriously that he almost started fighting with the 19-year-old defender who he’d already “kicked all afternoon” anyway.

It was standard practice for Liverpool’s under-21s to hold a debrief near the dugout rather than the changing rooms after the final whistle but Suárez was in a furious mood and having showered quickly, returned to the pitch where he continued remonstrating with the defender before the pair were separated. For those teenagers representing Liverpool that day, it made them ask the question: “Jesus Christ, how much does this guy care?”

He had arrived at Anfield in January 2011, signing on the day Torres left for Chelsea in a British record deal. There was a sliding doors moment at Melwood where Torres got the call to go to Chelsea, as Suárez came in. The writer of this article was working for a magazine that afternoon, expecting to interview Torres and when he went, Suárez filled the space. Eighteen months later, he agreed to be the focus in a feature about free-kicks and was willing to explain what goes through his mind: what he focuses on and how he delivered the technique.

When Rodgers looked down from the windows of his office, he tried to put an end to the session fearing he might get injured. Yet Suárez insisted he carried on until he’d sent a hat-trick of shots racing past the mannequins in front of him. I left with the impression he truly loved practicing and getting better. In our first meeting, he always maintained eye contact and he held the door waiting for me to leave the room first. I later thought of him as a living contradiction.

Suárez was very close to Lucas Leiva and he played as much of a role as Gerrard in getting him to stay for another season. There was an active social scene amongst the South Americans at Liverpool between the Spanish and Portuguese-speakers. The scene involved regular children’s parties, where Suárez seemed to enjoy larking about with the kids on the dancefloor more than making conversation with the adults sitting at the tables. His daughter’s first birthday was in the basement of a famous city centre hotel and at the end of the party, when everyone went to say goodbye, his shirt was saturated. He’d been twirling around on the dancefloor the entire time – he just wanted to make sure the kids were enjoying themselves in the way he was not always able to after his parents split up when he was eight years old.

Listening to those who spent lots of time with him on Merseyside, a very different perception of Suárez develops. He would explain to them that football had toughened him, playing with older boys on the streets of Montevideo who could be twice his size or twice his age. “He grew up in a hard environment and this came out of him at various stages,” said one source. “Off the pitch he certainly wasn’t a demon but on it he had the capacity to turn into one.”

Even though Liverpool were flying in his last season, Suárez was frustrated that the club was still in a re-building process, that so much relied on him. Though he now looks back at his years at Liverpool fondly and has a genuine affection for the club, wanting it to do well, at the time of his departure his frustrations were rising quickly. The better he played and the more influential he became, the more he felt he could only really flourish if the whole story wasn’t around him and by the end he was playing to leave.

Lots of South Americans dream of representing Barcelona but Suárez’s reasons were deeper than most. He was 15 years old when he met Sofí, who lived 40km away in Solymar. “Sofí saved me from myself,” he wrote in his autobiography before explaining his torment after she moved to Barcelona when her father, who worked in a bank, transferred across continents. His career was defined by a vow of love. Soon, he made good on his promise to visit her by persuading his agent to give him the money for what was an expensive air fare and that was when they went to the Camp Nou for the first time, though they managed to get into the stadium without paying for a tour via a side entrance while security staff looked the other way. Having made his debut for Nacional at 17, an offer came from Getafe and that excited him because it would have meant living in Madrid, just a few hours away from Sofí by train.

He would instead arrive at the Camp Nou nearly nine years later via Groningen, Ajax and Liverpool. Going to Barcelona has made him think about the way he plays. He has since changed his game, recognising that he no longer has the acceleration that once allowed him to squeeze past so many defenders. The old Suárez, knowing he was not able to quite do as he really wanted may have lashed out at this regression. That he has been able to make modifications suggests that the chaotic reactions of his Liverpool days are behind him. He now takes up positions where he can bring others into action more often and more quickly, namely Lionel Messi.

The presence and influence of Messi, indeed, has been profound. Whereas Zlatan Ibrahimovic did not accept it, Suárez realises every player at Barcelona serves Messi and Messi serves the team. That’s how it works. Some aren’t willing. But Suárez was very willing from the beginning.

He had never taken himself very seriously before and at Liverpool, as he grew to understand the language as well as the humour of the people in the city, he became a more prominent character in the dressing room, though this sometimes crossed the line between jokes and messing around.

Suárez acted that way because of his childhood, when he moved from Salto in western Uruguay from Montevideo and other children from the capital teased him for his unusual accent. At first, he reacted to the taunts but he learned to resist them by laughing at himself first and this manifested itself in the confines of training grounds, where he wanted to be respected and therefore took solace in laughter, often putting himself down first. Yet at Barcelona, he saw how seriously Messi took himself and still manages to hold respect. This has sharpened his focus.

At Barcelona, he knew the club would not put up with some of his behaviour, though he found it easier to be himself because of the abilities around him, the language and the presence of Sofi’s family. The standards, indeed, meant there was less chance of him overstepping the line as he did sometimes at Liverpool where, according to another source, “he tried to gain extra inches by doing something mad rather than practical – he does not have that problem at Barca.”

Inside Barcelona, there is an acceptance that he is slowly reaching the same point as Xavi and Andrés Iniesta. Should a move to lucrative offer come from China, Barcelona would consider it but their respect for the player is such, they would not force him out. He might not be a part of the original furniture like Xavi or Iniesta but he’d be treated in the same way because he’s done a lot for them. It is unimaginable that he’ll remain at the Camp Nou beyond the end of next season because he’s already had to change his game to stay in the team but in doing that, it has enabled him to score some really important goals as Barcelona have closed in on another league title. Will another one come against the team he used to captain, and how would he react to that? At Anfield, you’d bet on him celebrating.