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Luis Suarez: Is the whole picture black and white?

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Luis Suarez – misunderstood? A lover of controversy? Or just a racist?

Whether you have made up your mind about him or not and at the risk of upsetting some United fans; please let me just point out a few things:

Firstly this is not the only occasion Patrice Evra has played the race card, in some fashion; a couple of years ago a groundsman at Chelsea was accused of racism. A man not likely to risk his job, something proved true when Evra was charged and all allegations were dropped.

Now surely this is not someone whose word you should rely on to bring a racism charge; as is the case with the Suarez disciplinary meeting. There is no video evidence of Suarez saying anything; no other player heard anything, even Patrice’s team mates. Hence why the case did not go to court, everything has to be proved behind reasonable doubt, obviously not at FA Headquarters!

If there was clear video evidence then a proud club like Liverpool, Kenny Dalglish and the fans would not stand by someone who would have been seen to be disgracing the club in eyes of the footballing world, not matter how talented he is.

I accept Suarez has admitted to using the term “Negrito” but in what context? Maybe we will never know. Although Evra’s reaction seems to suggest that it wasn’t as bad as we now all seem to think. I do not condone Zidane’s behaviour in the world cup final but it must be said that is the most common reaction to verbal abuse of any kind, all Evra did was go the referee at the end of the game, not during, after. Dignity perhaps?

At the hearing of the case Evra also admitted to verbally abusing Suarez in Spanish, first. Where was his punishment? Surely whether it was of racist content he should have been made an example of too?

One thing that is clear, however, is that John Terry, the then England captain, has not been brought to justice by the FA and yet he has been investigated by the police and is now having o endure a court case. Some may point to double standards and it is hard to argue or for the FA to justify.

Something else that has not been mentioned to often is that Luis Suarez is of mixed race origin, surely to be a racist would make him a self loathing hypocrite, which I do not think anyone can say he is. I don’t think anyone can argue that he seems to be a man very confident in his own abilities and skin.

I do not condone Suarez not shaking Patrice Evra’s hand, even if he didn’t want to. After all he promised Liverpool FC he would and it would not have done any harm. On the other hand you can see why he didn’t, why would he want to shake the hand of a player he feels may have cheated to get him banned from the game!

I am not standing up for Suarez, if he was racist to Patrice Evra then he should never put the red of Liverpool on again never mind play in the Premier League, however I do hope people realise Evra is not as innocent as everyone seems to make out! Not just in this instance

Whatever your opinion or where you club alliances lie, nothing can be proved; nothing has been proved and without clear video evidence nothing is black and white (excuse the pun.)

Now everyone has apologised, Suarez has served his ban so let’s get on with the football and hopefully in future it will be better than the game we all saw at Old Trafford on Saturday! It wasn’t the spectacle we all wanted to see – now that was the real shame of the day.

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  • Karl Moon says:

    This was the first time Evra complained regarding racism. The two previous issues, the Chelsea ground staff and Steve Finnan were reported by people other than Evra and on both accounts Evra denied knowledge of them.

    Steve Finnan was reported by two deaf viewers watching back on TV, the Chelsea groundsman by Mike Phelan and another member of the Manchester United coaching team.

    So yes, his is a word you would rely on, another fact made clear by the independent panel brought in to discuss this case.

    • Manchoo says:

      Evra and credible are just to words that are always going o be wrong together. Also Fergies credibility should be questioned after his staunch defence of Peter Schmichel after his clear racist abuse to Ian Wright.

      • Manchoo says:

        We all know Evra has a history of making false accusations and playing the race card. The guys a disgrace and should be dealt with in the way you would deal with a women who cried false rape.

        It was amusing to see he was too scared for Ajax game. He will also be too scared for the France v Uragauy game lol. Maybe he is feeling guilty? He has been poor since this all started anyway.

  • John says:

    More balance is coming to Evragate affair now, but sadly noy in the pantomime press who conducted the witch hunt against Surez.
    To me the situation is clear and it looks like cheats and liars have won the battle
    I am sure in the years to come, the truth will come out,( just as it did after the last press witch hunt about Liverpool after Hillsbourgh ) . But the damage to Surez and Liverpool has been done ( which was the objective of the whole sorry episode)

  • Dave says:

    Its a shame that when there’s finally an article with a bit of balance that it’s also factually incorrect.
    1. Evra never claimed Suarez said negrito.
    2. He did complain to the ref during the game.

    There’s plenty to rip apart in the report and the whole episode: but get your facts right first.

    • jj says:

      Did not Evra make a racist accusation against the Senalagese supporters when he decided to play for France instead of Senagal?

    • jj says:

      The complaint to the referee is a disputed point. Kuyt said Evra claimed he was only being booked because he was black. The referee said he did not hear anything and had also lost his original notes. The FA chose to discount Kuyt, the only first hand creditable witness. Then the FA called both Comolli and Kuyt liars when they said they mistranslated Suarez just because the mistranslation was duplicated. This despite an incident of words reputedly said whilst a roaring crowd was likely to drown out and confuse what was actually said. Would Suarez even remember one hour later his exact words as he had no reason to remember them. Did Evra think Suarez said these words? possibly. Once Evra had reported “at least 10x” to the Media almost immediately he was subject to a huge libel action and the FA asked what was Evra’s motive?

  • Rob says:

    Dave,

    You’re right, Evra claimed that he was called “nigger” “at least 10 times” – I appreciate your correction but it hardly helps your point?

    • Dave says:

      On the contrary Rob.
      My point was just that the article was incorrect.
      And the fact Evra said ‘nigger’ in his initial claim, subsequently agreed he was wrong, and changed the number of times from 1 (on the pitch to his teammates and the ref) to 10, to 5, to 6 proves that he’s not the most reliable of witnesses – despite that being the commissions opinion.

      • jj says:

        Hernandez in a web page some months earlier had referred to Evra as ‘negrita’. Why did the FA refuse Hernandez as a witness? Supposedly, he was not an expert in Spanish despite being a native speaker. His evidence may have supported Suarez’s stance of the words being non racist. But then FA decided two European, 2nd language Spanish speakers (Kuyt and Commoli), could give a valid account and make the correct translation of the local dialect of a Urugyuan spanish speaker without error. Evidence heavilly disputed by an accepted expert in Rio Platense.
        FA, arbitary acceptance of translations using opposing logic over the same issue, just to bring the guilty Suarez verdict.

  • Deebiosi says:

    Also Evra never made the complaint about the Chelsea groundsmn, Mike Phelan did. Evra was told that he called him a stupid immigrant when he actually said stupid idiot. It’s a smear against Evra to suggest that he made the complaint. Read the report or don’t coment.

    • jj says:

      Evra accused Senegalese supporters of racial abuse for making ‘monkey noises’ after he rejected his own country in favour of France.
      This begs some questions
      These were black supporters abusing a man they considered a traitor with noises that could be just as easily be construed as simple abuse. Does Evra think abuse of any kind, when aimed at him, must be racist? When Liverpool supporters booed him,it was certainly not because of his race. The Suarez incident fits the same pattern.

  • Jessica Marsden says:

    Andre Marriner admitted Evra said something to him but could not recall what, so it wasn’t a direct complaint and I never said that is what Evra accussed him of saying, it is what he himself admitted to saying during the hearing.

    Hope you liked everything else.

    • Dave says:

      No, you’re incorrect.
      ‘negrito’ was neither claimed to have been said by Evra, or admitted to be said by Suarez.

  • Mezz says:

    @Dave It’s a shame that when people comment on the ‘incorrectness’ of facts in an article that they do not take the time to read the article properly. Nowhere in the the article does it claim that Evra claimed Suarez used the word Negrito. It actually says ‘Suarez has admitted to using the term Negrito’.

    If you’re going to claim that somebody who has taken the time to write an article has not got their information correct, may I suggest that you get yours correct also.

    • Dave says:

      That makes no sense.
      This isn’t an article about everything Suarez has ever said.
      It’s about what he said that day.

  • Manchoo says:

    Evra claimed Suarez said “nigg#r” 10 times. This was his claim to the ref when him and Fergie approached him after the match. He then proceeded to change his claim 3 times. This is because he is a credible witness. Graham Taylor of the FA demands they proceed with hand shakes even though he was willing to drop them for his racist England captain Terry.
    Fergie and Evra were also a disgrace after the match.

  • Sir Henry Afulukwe says:

    You nob
    Yes you are standing up for Suarez.
    If you are a neutral you can’t justify him not shaking hands with Evra.
    It harms the integrity of the game.
    I was not on the pitch that day but the odds were against Suarez, he is the same player that bit a fellow player at Ajax, pulled another players hair, bitch slapped a goal-bound ball in a world cup Q-final in the dying seconds, blatantly kicked Micheal Dawson and many more.
    Simply put, he has issues.

    • John says:

      If you thought someone had lied deliberately to defame you and the club you played for, would you shake his hand?
      I would not

      • Sir Henry Afulukwe says:

        It’s one thing thinking and it’s another knowing.
        Only Suarez knows whether he was being racist or not.
        English media would murder you whether you feel aggrieved or not.
        Liverpool is bigger than Suarez, he should have shook hands and dusted himself, not tell the club he will shake hands and then go out there and put on a show.

    • Jessica Marsden says:

      I didn’t justify him not shaking Evras hand, he should of done. But I was pointing out you can see why he didn’t.

    • che says:

      bitch slapped a goal bound ball… hmmm, i havent heard it described like that before… next you will say he was having forplay when he is holding a ball?
      as for the incident in the QF of the world cup, get over it… if that was any other player from any other nationality, they would have done the same thing… you nob…

      • Sir Henry Afulukwe says:

        Perhaps you didn’t take note of the other controversies that have surrounded him?
        Numskull.

    • Joek says:

      You’re the Nob “Sir Henry”. If you want to see disgrace then watch 4 Man utd players refusing to shake Patrick Viera’s had a few years back, yes another black Frenchman, but alas not that little lying scumbag.

    • jj says:

      Two Urugyuan players attempted to save that goal attempt yet only Suarez was successful and is lambasted for it. I wonder 2 things. If it was Germany rather than Ghana would the English condemnation be so bad. If Suarez had more negroid features would this issue have even arisen.

  • Red1 says:

    @Dave The article says “I accept Suarez has admitted to using the word negrito”. I doesn’t say Evra accused him of saying it as mentioned in your 1st point. So the article is correct on this issue.

    • Dave says:

      Again, the article is about what Suarez admitted to saying to Evra.
      He didn’t say he’d said ‘negrito’.
      He admitted to saying ‘porque, Negro?”.

  • BootleBob says:

    The FA’s kangaroo court found Suarez ‘probably’ guilty based on the testimony of the two protagonists. Evra was coached by the FA Commission three times through the video ‘evidence’, Suarez had to give his version in a one off. Evra’s claims varied wildly and the Commission simply decided to accept what he said. The whole thing stinks of a stitch up and hardly anybody has questioned what the Commission did. Justice and truth are the losers in all this,

  • Dave says:

    And another with the facts wrong.
    It was Scott Parker, not Dawson, and he apologised straight away for a genuine accident: he went to kick a loose ball at waist height.
    He hand-balled on the line like lots of players have done without the fuss: Phil Neville and Scholes come to mind off the top of my head.
    The biting was deplorable and indefensible. The tug on Rafaels hair just petty rather than anything worth making a fuss out of.

    He’s a bit mad. The game needs mad ones.

  • Manchoo says:

    The only wrong I see of Suarez in this is after telling his club he would shake hands he should have. The FA and the media take the blame for much of the rest. Even the FA translators spoke different dialect from Suarez. To me this stinks of three White old men of the FA who were so scared of looking racist themselves that there was no chance of a proper debate. The FA have showed great ignorance. Even some race relation groups jumped to conclusions before any facts were known and done their credibility great harm. I’m a Utd fan but this whole thing stinks.

  • chunky says:

    The “contract” on him has been carried out so let’s just move on!

  • Jonesy says:

    An attempt here to say that because he has a firey temperament and a history of physical violence he MUST be guilty of being racist too. Thus he was PROBABLY guilty. Deeply flawed logic.
    At he same time ignoring the history of Evra who has been officially described by his own French FA as “a man of low character and a liar”. Alongside that is his history of plaring the race card.
    Since there was no tangible evidence it was one dodgy word against another dodgy word. The injustice is staggering. Any court of law would have destroyed both characters equally and concluded “NOT PROVEN”…thus innocent.
    Yey only one player was punished?
    And has Sir Exlax or Evra apologised for claiming that Suarez called him a “n@gger”? A smear attempt that the UK press were more than happy to run weith, after asl it sold papers and why let the facts get in the way of a commercial success?

  • rudi says:

    well done jessica. nice write up, it has some balance and its a nice change from the biased views of the false moralists and hypocrites…
    There is always going to be two sides to a story, so it doesnt matter who’s story you believe, LS or PE… Its more so the FA really screwed this up big time. This could have played out a lot better for both players and clubs, and the beautiful game itself. But the FA dragged the incident out for what seemed eternity. the independent panel (was sus), the FA coaching evra (was sus), the stories by the players (were sus)… im my opinion, the blame of this whole debacle is squarely on the shoulders of the FA for being so incompetent. they are the ones that could have made a difference in the whole matter, but acted like a bunch of numb nuts… they let the media run this whole thing like a circus… enuf said

  • Simon says:

    I agree with what you are saying here and the racist abuse that Evra admitted to has not even been considered by the FA. Saurez admitted to using a term regularly used in a non abusive context in Spanish speaking cultures and without any other evidence is banned and crucified by evrybody and their dog. He has also been branned a racist and that is not what the FA chaged him with and I seem to remember at the time the FA went to great lengths to say he wasn’t racist and this was something that hypocritical Talk Sport presenter Adrian Durham had made a point of until I heard him last week saying that Saurez had been charged with racism and he agreed that he was racist because the FA said he was(they didn’t).

    However this is clearly something that the FA have now created in peoples minds for the way they have gone about it and while the situation may not have been handled in the best way by LFC this is not something they deal with everyday, although I do and could probably have provided them with guidance, but would have agreed with the sentiment in what they were doing. The problem is the way the FA set their rule book out with no flexibility. I would point you to the rediculace situation at old trafford, you I do mean the idiotic old man with the red nose, this time though it was the punishment for his comments about Howard Webb before the Chelsea game last year. The FA do not allow any comments to be made about refs, Taggart, Demnto what ever you call him said that Webb was a good ref and was punished by the FA, because of the rigid rules. Saurez was embroiled in a Spanish exchange of words with Evra and that is the context the exchange should have been taken in, but no the word has been changed by the Man U camp from the time on the pitch from a word meaning black or even black friend to in some reports the vile N word a lot of ignorant people use.

    Anyway back to the point I wanted to make that the fight against racism has taken a step back. This is not because Saurez said something to Evra but because the people attempting to deal with these issues do not understand them. By this they have devalued the issues around racism and left it to the masses in football grounds to take it to the level chanting and booing of opposition players. If they start calling people racist without understanding the issue or even what racism is then any work done to fight this previously will be eroded. If people start having opinions based on mis information or from people who don’t understand racism then they get it badly wrong.

    If they had any commitmment to the Kick it out campaigne they should educate people properly. That should be an education that doesn’t simply say that referrence to the colour of someones skin is racist. If that was the case and I was a footballer where in course of a game I say I am black I would be charged by the FA or if it has to relate to another player and I say we are black or an apposing player and say we are black then another charge.

    The problem is not the JT direct racism we can all see and understand the if you say someone is a black C you now what his mind set is. If you do as Saurez did and cultural differences are accounted for you don’t understand what you are dealing with. If Saurez described Evra as black ask Evra how he would describe himself and the colour of his skin. Ask Evra what he believes Negro or Negrito means to him in the context of a spanish conversation. Ask him if any of his Spanish speaking team mates openly use the term towards him and if he is happy with this. Then ask him why he is so upset when he Saurez responds to him in the same way which so enrages him.

    Please don’t misunderstand or let people make light of racism like Evra has done it devalues the whole concept and the fight against it. He has totally undermined the work that has been done. If you say someone is racist then they are condemed and if it is backed up by a charged that is then taken by the press and change from mentioning the colour of someones skin to being a racist you are the guilty people and yes guilty of racism.

    I have to apologies that this is a bit of a rant and not the considered piece of writing it should be but its Saturday morning and I got a bit excited at seeing something that starts to discuss some of the real issues involved in the Evra case.

  • bazza says:

    What non-Liverpool fans can’t get a grip on is that this could have been any foreign player instead of Suarez and the result would have been the same. This wasn’t a witch hunt against Liverpool it was a chance for the FA to show the world how tough they are on racism. But unfortunately the fight against racism is one of the losers here and the FA has become a laughing stock all over the world because of this affair.

  • Jonesy says:

    No, non-LFC fans cannot understand why the word of a previously discredited witness was accepted against the word of another person. And why Evra’s varying versions of the story were accepted. The case was NEVER proven beyond reasonable doubt.
    Not a shred of hard tangible evidence.
    Thats the issue we have trouble with.

  • Jonesy says:

    I agree with Manchoo. But do we know for sure that Suarez lied to KK or did he just not have the stomach to shake the Weasel’s hand at the crucial moment? Only Suarez himself knows that.

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