Suarez interview - Football is a lie

‘Football is a lie’ - Rafael Benitez

Liverpool’s former manager has come up with some interesting quotes down the years. Priests on mountains of sugar, white liquid in bottles etc but his notion that the beautiful game is fictitious might just be his best. It certainly rings true during these arduous summer breaks. These hot, tedious months where the focus shifts from the football pitch to Jim White, agents and Twitter.

No doubt everyone has seen Luis Suarez’s interview with Sid Lowe by now.  In it, the want away striker essentially laid his cards on the table for all to see, inviting criticism and scorn in doing so. In isolation this interview makes little difference, but as Benitez’s quote suggests, in football perception means more than reality.

The Uruguayan has more or less begged Liverpool to release his shackles and allow him to scamper down to London to fulfil his dreams. It’s angered Liverpool fans, naturally. It’s given hope to Arsenal fans. But what else has it done? Precious little. What he said to Sid Lowe he will have undoubtedly said to Brendan Rodgers and Ian Ayre already. For every ‘extraordinary’ interview like this one, you must look past the headline grabbing quotes and try to discern what the reality of the situation is.

Let me go: Suarez is desperate to leave Liverpool 

People seem keen to push the notion that because Suarez has publicly slammed Liverpool and revealed his intention to vacate the north west that there has been some seismic shift in the landscape of this transfer fiasco. There hasn’t been. What this interview shows is desperation.

Early in the summer Suarez made passes at Real Madrid as regularly as he sipped mate from his omnipresent flask. Unfortunately for Suarez, as things stand Madrid have their eyes locked on a more attractive target and are paying him little attention. If Suarez wants to leave Liverpool this summer then right now his only option is to move to a team who are not yet guaranteed Champions League football and whose potential for winning that competition or the Premier League are remote at best.

He has cited his desire for Champions League football as his motivating factor for wanting to leave Liverpool and says people should accept this. The truth is, Liverpool’s supporters do accept this. They yearn for the same thing. Had Madrid rocked up and tabled an acceptable bid for the player, fans would have waved him off with regret but also understanding. The problem is that Arsenal, while not a local rival as Suarez correctly points out in his interview, are the team that Liverpool must catch this season and their offer undersells Suarez by a long way in today’s ridiculous market.

So why now? Why alienate the supporters who, as recently as this weekend, still had his back and chanted his name? Why threaten to take the club that have supported him so often to court? Why bring all this on himself? Again, we arrive back at desperation.

At war: Brendan Rodgers and Arsene Wenger 

Arsenal’s farcical £40m plus £1 bid came a long time ago now. It was rejected out of hand by Liverpool. It isn’t Suarez’s value and that apart, it was downright antagonistic. Arsene Wenger wants this saga to be completed ‘amicably’ but it was that childish bid that started a war of words between the two clubs and probably strengthened Liverpool's resolve to keep the player from the Gunners' clutches. If this transfer does end up in a court, one wonders what would be made of Arsenal’s extraordinarily specific bid. But I digress, back to Suarez. He claims he has a £40m release clause. He claims to have the PFA’s backing. He claims that he will hand in a transfer request. Once more, football is a lie.

Either that clause is fictional or his ‘super agent’ Pere Guardiola is, well, a little bit silly. If that clause is set in stone then Liverpool had no right to reject Arsenal’s bid. Guardiola, being a ‘super agent’ and all that jazz, presumably would know this. He’d have threatened Liverpool with legal action the moment he got wind of that offer being rejected. Liverpool insist no such clause exists and reading between the lines, it seems they are correct. If they weren’t then this transfer would have either been completed or would be being played out in a court room by now.

Suarez and Guardiola are obviously frustrated with Liverpool's resistance to the transfer (though, not frustrated enough to wave a ‘loyalty' bonus by submitting a transfer request just yet) and making the player’s position at Liverpool untenable by burning his bridges on the pages of the Guardian newspaper seems like a desperate roll of the dice to apply additional pressure to FSG and Liverpool Football Club. Moaning, whining and telling the world how you are a slave to a club that have gone back on their word are not the actions of people in control of a situation like this.

Assuming no clause exists then Suarez can conduct as many Twitter crashing interviews as he wants but his situation changes little. Liverpool value the player in excess of £50m and don’t want to sell him to the team they have in their crosshairs. Stalemate. If FSG stick to their plan and refuse to send Suarez down south then Suarez must hope that a team from abroad make a bid for his services or prepare his next move. That would be threatening to strike, ala Carlos Tevez. To do that in World Cup year, aged 26 would take some real bottle and stupidity but nothing can be ruled out. Words mean little anymore. Football is just a lie.