Sao Paulo – It was a moment that seemed scripted by his own imagination, as if he had obsessed about it so long that he had willed it to happen.
“I dreamt of this match so many times,” said Luis Suarez, Uruguay’s brilliant and volatile striker. “I had to control my anxiety.”
And now he was chasing the ball – the dream – down the Arena de Sao Paulo’s right wing, down a stretch of wide-open space he had envisioned for four years, England and Uruguay deadlocked, five tense minutes remaining in a must-win match for both sides.
Suarez collected the ball, leaving a pair of defenders behind as he dashed into the right side of the penalty area and then fired over goalkeeper Joe Hart a decisive shot that sent England’s World Cup hopes disappearing into the night’s cold darkness.
If Suarez, perhaps the English Premier League’s most gifted and reviled star, didn’t silence his critics Thursday night he took no small measure in stabbing them in the heart with a pair of goals that were the difference in Uruguay’s 2-1 victory.
For at least one night the talk wouldn’t be about his transgressions.
The goal-line handball in the 2010 World Cup that hounded him for four years.
The bite that cost him a 10-game suspension and jeopardized his place at Liverpool.
“Everybody knows too many people in England laugh at me and (criticize) my attitude these last few years, and this is a very good time for me,” Suarez said. “And now I want to see the Internet and what they’re saying now.”
Less than a month ago Suarez was in a wheelchair after undergoing minor knee surgery. Hours earlier he was a question mark to even play Thursday. But the story of Suarez’s brilliance, his resiliency and redemption will have to share space, certainly, on the front and back pages of Fleet Street’s tabloids with the reality of where England is in the world’s game food chain: a mid-major.
The once mighty Three Lions have just one win it their last seven World Cup matches. With Thursday’s defeat coming on the heels of a loss to Italy last week, England’s hopes of advancing to the second round depend on a mathematical formula so convoluted that England players weren’t sure it was even worth considering.
“We’re clutching at straws now,” England captain Steven Gerrard said.
Indeed, in the days ahead, the focus in England will be not so much of the Three Lions’ June24 match with Costa Rica but on how England got here and where it’s going.
The national debate will find England’s international struggles are not simply a recent phenomenon. For all the success of Liverpool, Manchester United and Chelsea at the club level in the European Cup, now UEFA Champions League, in the past five decades, England’s national team has rarely been among the game’s elite. In the 11 World Cups since 1970, England has reached the tournament quarterfinals five times. Three times England has failed to qualify for the World Cup.
But not since 1958 has England failed to make it to the second round of a World Cup it has qualified for.
“People will want to look at the bigger picture,” England defender Leighton Baines said. “It’s the easiest thing to do sometimes isn’t it, to point fingers and be critical and in the position we’re in you have to accept that and we do to a point.”
Many critics argue that Suarez is symbolic of what is ailing England: that there are too many foreign stars in the EPL, thus denying young English players from developing. Reigning EPL champion Manchester City has players in this World Cup representing Brazil, Spain, Ivory Coast, Argentina, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Belgium, seven players total. There are two Man City players on the England roster.
“We’ve got some young players with us who play in the league and I’m sure it helps their development playing against people of that quality,” Baines said, disputing the too many foreigners theory.
Few players in the EPL possess Suarez’s talent – or his baggage.
His last World Cup ended in controversy. Late in extra time of Uruguay’s 2010 World Cup quarterfinal with Ghana, Suarez used his hand to swat away a sure goal by the Black Star’s Stephen Appiah that would have sent Ghana through to the semifinals. Ghana was awarded a penalty kick and Suarez received a red card, an ejection that meant he would also miss Uruguay’s next match. Suarez lingered on the sideline long enough to celebrate when Asamoah Gyan missed the penalty kick, his shot hitting the crossbar.
He was banned for 10 games after biting Chelsea’s Branislav Ivanovic during an April 2013 match. Suarez returned to Anfield for a record-setting 2013-14 season, scoring 31 goals in 33 games for Liverpool, winning the English Premier League scoring title and equaling Real Madrid’s Cristiano Ronaldo as Europe’s top scorer.
But he injured his knee in training with Uruguay last month, becoming a question mark for the tournament.
“That just goes to show he hasn’t played in five weeks and he’s still as great, as deadly as ever,” Gerrard said.
Suarez, clearly several pounds overweight, made his presence felt almost immediately, knocking Liverpool teammate Gerrard over during a mid-air challenge for a 50/50 ball in the seventh minute.
Then in the 39th minute, Suarez struck, heading an Edinson Cavani ball from the left side over Hart caught in no-man’s land.
England’s Wayne Rooney, who has battled his own World Cup demons, scored an equalizer in the 75th minute, breaking his World Cup scoring drought that covered three tournaments.
But Rooney and England’s celebration lasted just 10 minutes.
“We got ourselves back in the game, got some momentum and, with that momentum, felt like we might be able to win it ourselves,” Baines said. “Yeah, we were punished there in the end.”
A punt by Uruguay goalkeeper Fernando Muslera skimmed off Gerrard’s head backward into the open field and the path of a charging Suarez, chasing his dream, leaving his demons, his critics behind.
“A few days ago I think maybe we win and I score against England,” he said beaming. “It’s an amazing moment for me.”
Contact the writer: sreid@ocregister.com
