Luis Suarez appeared in a charity match at Anfield this weekend, a homecoming for the star who left Liverpool in the summer.
Speaking to the media after the game, he told the world that if he were ever return to England, there’s only one club he’d return to. Liverpool, of course.
Obviously this isn’t to be taken as speculation that Suarez will return. But hypothetically, if he were to want to come back, would Liverpool want necessarily want him?
At the start of the season, Liverpool struggled for form, they had lost such a huge, an irreplaceable player, Luis Suarez, and even though they received a huge transfer fee for him, it was very difficult to cover the hole left by arguably the third best player in the world.
But Liverpool opted not so much to cover the hole as to build around it.
In the summer – with the money the Suarez sale brought into the club – Brendan Rodgers brought in lots of talented, versatile players – players who give him lots of different options and play in different ways. Emre Can has played at centre back, Lazar Markovic at wingback, Adam Lallana has been very creative, and Mario Balotelli has provided some world-class laziness to the front line.
These are all very different players, and crucially all different to what Liverpool had to begin with. They are complementary to the squad.
Although Suarez was such a talisman, these new players play with a different mentality to that which Liverpool displayed last season. There is no obvious star bailing them out, and with all the options they have to change games, there’s no looking to one man – be that Luis Suarez or even the soon-to-depart Steven Gerrard – to grab the team by the scruff of the neck and lead them to victory.
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Liverpool have moved on now. They’ve climbed the table admirably, but it may still be too late for Champions League football next season. United are out in front, and Liverpool need to beat Arsenal on Saturday to stand a chance. So the sale of Suarez probably did adversely impact their season as they struggled to replace him until December. But that’s when they started to click. They now play a different style of football than they did when they had Suarez and Daniel Sturridge in full ‘SAS’ pomp.
There’s probably always a place for a player as good as Suarez though, and if the manager is good enough, perhaps he could find a way of adding a player like that without disrupting the squad. But I’m not sure Rodgers would even risk that – this team has been playing so well of late without the Uruguayan and they’ve found a new way to cope, and maybe even get better in the long-run. They’ve not replaced him, they’ve just taken on a completely different mentality.
But there’s another reason Liverpool wouldn’t want Suarez back.
Liverpool stuck by the player through thick and thin. His second biting conviction, – on Branislav Ivanovic – his conviction for using racist language towards Patrice Evra, and then appearing to refuse to shake the erstwhile United fullback’s hand. They stuck with him through his accusations of diving, and lots of other misdemeanours before finally cashing in at a time when English football was roundly fed-up with his recidivist hijinks – the moment he tried to take a chunk out of Giorgio Chiellini’s shoulder.
He blamed the English media for his treatment and his lengthy ban – and perhaps the papers didn’t help him out – but frankly, who could condone some of the behaviour he displayed?
Perhaps Liverpool could find room in the team for Suarez, though they’d be risking quite a bit of forward momentum to even try – this time it’s Rodgers who deserves high praise for his maestro performance in transforming post-Suarez (and post-Gerrard) Liverpool.
But this, along with the fact that Suarez is, and always will be, such a liability for the club’s image off the pitch as well as on it would surely make Liverpool think twice about taking him back even if he wanted to come.
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