Actually, never mind this week, on Sunday directly after the incident took place, Graeme Souness could barely articulate how much of a calamity this would be for Suarez and Liverpool. As Souness deems Liverpool as 'his' club, it seemed he was already on a damage limitation mission by not voicing just how atrocious the act was. He called it 'embarrassing'. No offence Graeme or to Liverpool supporters but "embarrassing" is loosing to West Bromwich Albion 3-0 on the first day of the season. This is a heinous crime of the sporting world. And the fact that the perpetrator has two other previous infringements, only serves to exacerbate the situation into a new, unforgiving realm. It was left to Jamie Redknapp, a former Liverpool captain, to spell out what this meant for all parties concerned; disrepute for player, club, country and sport.
What is with all this caper in sport recently? Just three Saturdays ago, Stade Francais scrum-half Jerome Fillol spat in the face of Irish Scrum-half Peter Stringer, in the Amlin Challenge Cup quater-final between Stade and Bath. Two particularly unpleasant, unsanitary and darn right nasty acts in just one month. Are their mothers on holiday?And why have they not been scolded and forbidden to go on the swings for a fortnight?
For that offence, Fillol earned himself a fourteen week ban, (swings not included). What's next? Rafael Nadal gets his hair pulled by a ball boy, Rory Mcilroy gets wedgied by Tiger Woods or a Champion boxer takes a chunk from his opponent with his teeth in a title bout, and twelve years later acts in one of the most successful comedy films of the past decade? O wait.
Though in all seriousness, presuming the French scrumhalf has a match every week from when the ban is introduced, that could amount to a 14 match ban. So spitting is worse than biting eh? Or maybe Rugby just imposes harsher sanctions. Probably the latter.
Though back to Suarez for a second. In terms of the actual act; Branislav Ivanovic will probably have been left with nothing worse than something akin to a love bite. The Serbian wasn't exactly on the end of a leg-breaking tackle or a jaw shattering sucker punch. For me, it is the striker's split second of premeditation that is the shocking part. You can see it when he is tangled with the defender, just before he makes that lunge over to sink his teeth into Ivanovic's arm, Suarez appears to make a split second decision to commit this act. Its animalistic and not unlike something you would see one of the zombies on 'The Walking Dead' do
Insert compulsory zombie picture here
So what becomes of Luis Suarez now? Stay in English football and never really live this whole thing down? Or go to one of the other major European leagues and never really live this whole thing down? This recent scandal, coupled with the other hefty ones in his nightmarish closet for PR and marketing surely has an affect on his value in the transfer market. As anyone will tell you, he is a gifted footballer, one of the best (if not the best) in the Premier League and worth easily above £30m or £40m. Now top clubs after his signature will look for some sort of special Suarez disaster discount. Which will will include Multiple Provisos and money back guarantees in his contract. £5m back for using twitter when unsupervised, £10m back for biting someone's nose off, his full transfer fee back plus a further £25m paid to the buying club by Liverpool if said player turns out to be a mad, xenophobic fascist.
