Suarezs poverty is one of the many narratives about his life, and, although it is often used as a trope to explain his violence, its true. He did grow up poor, his life mirroring the hard childhood of Ricardo Gabito. His mother scrubbed floors. He couldnt afford soccer shoes, which once kept him from trying out for an elite team. But the allure of the rags-to-riches storyline often distracts people from the broken-family storyline, which shaped Suarez most of all. His father abandoned them, and Suarez, entering his teen years, started skipping practice, drinking, staying out late. He was lost. His coach often went into Suarezs home to drag his striker to practice. He played with all of the rage fans see today, but none of the determination, and none of the grace. Luis Suarez was wasting his life. Then, when he was 15, he met a girl. Her name was Sofia Balbi. She had blond hair and fair skin. Luis worked as a street sweeper, and during his shift he picked up coins so he could take her out. Her family lived a comfortable life, and they let Luis into their home. He ate regular meals at Sofias. She told him his poor grades came from laziness and not stupidity, and she demanded he work harder. In her family, he found the thing hed never had before, a sense of belonging, of safety. In 2003, Sofias family moved to Spain. Luis sank into a dark place. He had lost his new family, lost his soulmate and his muse. His work habits slipped. Years later, his rise to the Premier League seems inevitable. It wasnt. The reason Suarez became a great player is that he loved Sofia. She lived in Europe, and he lived in South America, and he could clean streets for the rest of his life and not afford a plane ticket. So his young lovesick mind concocted a completely irrational plan, typical of the teenage boy species: He would dedicate himself to soccer, working hard and endlessly, and hed get good enough to earn a position on a European team, and the team would fly him across the ocean to his Sofia. Nuts, right? Basically, the theory goes, anything that threatens his ability to score, and win, isnt processed in his subconscious as the act of a sportsman but, rather, as an act of aggression against his wife and his children. Watching him play certainly supports the idea because, when a defender presses close, Suarez doesnt respond as if the man is trying to take the ball. He reacts as if the defender is trying to send him back to the streets of Montevideo, alone.
Posted on: Thu, 11 Dec 2014 15:52:52 +0000
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