PFA Player Of The Year
Personal information
Full name: Luis Alberto Suarez Diaz
Date of birth: 24 January 1987
Age: 27
Place of birth: Salto, Uruguay
Height: 1.81 m (5 ft 11 in)
Playing position: Forward
Club information
Current club: Liverpool
Number: 7
Youth career
2003–2005: Nacional
Senior career
2005–2006: Nacional 34 Appearances, 12 goals
2006–2007: Groningen 37 Appearances, 15 goals
2007–2011: Ajax 159 Appearances, 111 goals
2011– Liverpool 131 Appearances, 81 goals
National team
2006–2007: Uruguay U20 4 Appearances, 2 goals
2007– Uruguay 77 Appearances, 38 goals
Between the Uruguayan striker, captain Steven Gerrard and and Daniel Sturridge, Liverpool are in the running for their first league title in 24 years.
They are the central trio in Rodgers’ dynamic and swaggering Liverpool side, taking 35 points from their first possible 39 in 2014. But as much as Gerrard and Sturridge have impressed, Suarez is the kingpin.
Without him, through hypothetical injury or suspension, Liverpool’s title would have surely lost its momentum.
Suarez has already scored more league goals for Liverpool than Fernando Torres ever did.
The decision to offload the Spaniard to Chelsea for £50 million, which was then partly reinvested in the £22.7 million deal for Suarez, is looking better with every passing game and every passing goal.
Liverpool have a strong tradition of celebrated No. 9s, and although he wears No. 7, the Uruguayan deserves to be ranked alongside club greats such as Ian Rush, Kenny Dalglish and Robbie Fowler.
But Suarez is so good he now transcends even Liverpool’s illustrious history. He’s already writing his legend in the context of the sport as a whole, and should he lead an otherwise mediocre Liverpool team to the title, he will have penned the climax to his story in English football.
In the race for this season’s Golden Boot, Suarez, with 30 league goals, is equal with even that of Ronaldo, on 28 goals, and Messi, 27 goals.
Consider the quality that permeates through both Ronaldo and Messi’s respective teams and Suarez’s achievements look all the more impressive.
For some it’s still difficult to appreciate Suarez, even when presented with his undeniable brilliance. His chequered past and disciplinary record doesn’t just taint the opinion of rival fans but that of neutrals too.
Many will never see him as anything other than a volatile and unpredictable pantomime villain. Yet he has been embraced by the Anfield faithful since having his head turned by Arsenal and the allure of immediate Champions League football in the summer.
Suarez is no longer pouting and preening at Arsene Wenger, but considering the year he’s enjoying, the 27-year-old will hardly need attract further attention to himself when the summer transfer window opens.
Suarez has become Europe’s best all-round striker. He always possessed a rapid turn of pace, squirming trickery and an innate audacity, but he has added a sharp cutting edge and goalscoring consistency to his game under Rodgers’ mentorship.
In the final days of the January 2011 transfer-window the “Torres to Chelsea” story became much bigger than any Suarez story which was a pity because the new Anfield arrival had a goals-per-game ratio that was even better than the Spanish hitman.
His full name is Luis Alberto Suarez Díaz and he was born in Salto, the second-largest populated city in Uruguay behind the capital, Montevideo. As a youngster he began his professional career with Nacional in Montevideo and helped them to win the Primera Division in 2005/06 while still a teenager.
Inevitably as with many other promising players from South America, he came to the attention of a number of European clubs and this led to a move to Groningen in Holland when he was still only 19 years old.
However, he only had one season in the Dutch Eredivisie at Groningen before big-city club Ajax signed him for seven and a half million Euros in August 2007.
Suarez’s eighty-one goals from 110 league matches in three and a half seasons at Ajax was a rate that few strikers in world football could match. Inevitably, he was becoming a star on the international stage too, having made his full debut for Uruguay while still a Groningen player.
The way Suarez performed in the 2010 World Cup in South Africa catapulted him to the watching world’s attention in a big way.
He started all three group matches and scored the only goal of the final group match against Mexico that ensured Uruguay would top Group A.
He then scored twice in a 3-0 victory over South Korea that led to a quarter-final with Ghana. Unfortunately, Suarez then received much negative publicity for a deliberate handball that led to a penalty (which was missed) and a red card that ruled him out of the World Cup semi-final with the Netherlands.
After serving his one-match ban, he was recalled for the 3rd/4th place play-off in which Germany beat Uruguay by three goals to two.
Not long after he became one of only a handful of players to score a century of first-team goals for Ajax. His club punished him with a two-match ban and a heavy fine after he had bitten PSV Eindhoven’s Ottman Bakkal.
The Dutch Football Association extended this ban to cover seven Eredivisie matches. This controversial incident led to much speculation that the Ajax captain’s time in Holland was coming to an end.
It did not; however, put off interest from several European clubs, all of whom realised that one piece of negativity regarding the player’s temperament did not change the fact that he had an outstanding goal-scoring record.
Liverpool had scored only 31 times from their opening 24 league matches of the 2010/11 season and obviously needed more firepower.
Ajax were unimpressed by Liverpool’s initial offer but that offer was upped until it matched the selling club’s valuation of their star striker.
Suarez had already proved that he could make the transition from one continent to another as a 19-year old.
Luis was an instant hit at Anfield from the moment on his debut that he raced on to Dirk Kuyt’s through ball, rounded Stoke goal keeper keeper Begovic and carefully pushed the ball towards the empty Kop goal.
Stoke defender Wilkinson’s attempt to clear the ball only succeeded in diverting it onto a post, from where it rebounded into the net.
So a little luck involved sure but definitely a Suarez goal and he had already shown in the brief time that he had been on the pitch that he was a confident and clever footballer. It was a shame that Suarez was not allowed to play in Europa League matches because his previous club Ajax were in the competition.
Restricted to Premier League matches only, he scored four times in 13 games including a wonderful strike from an almost impossible angle at Sunderland. His performances in the convincing home win over Manchester United in March and in the away thrashing of Fulham in May were mesmeric.
Suarez had a sensational Copa America in the summer of 2011. In six matches he had 16 shots at goal, eight on target and eight off target resulting in four goals, including the opening goal of the final against Paraguay.
In comparison his strike partner Diego Forlan, eight years his senior, had 26 attempts at goal, 12 on and 14 off target scoring only two goals, both in the final. Uruguay won the Copa America and Suarez was named the best player of the tournament.
The first full season in English football for Luis Suarez could hardly be described as trouble-free. Although his goals-per-game ratio was good (17 goals from 39 appearances) and his technical brilliance was there for all to see, he missed eight matches in the middle of the season after being found guilty of racially abusing
Manchester United defender Patrice Evra during the Anfield League meeting in the middle of October. On being again available for selection and picked for the return fixture at Old Trafford, he was seen to avoid shaking Evra’s hand and that inevitably led to more headlines and constant abuse from opposing supporters, not that it really affected the level of his performance.
On some days he was practically unplayable but on others he seemed to spend a lot of time moaning and falling over.
But the good outweighed the bad because of his close control and quick-footed brilliance, the sort of brilliance that enabled him to score a number of stunning goals, especially the first of his league cup brace at Stoke in October and the third of his amazing hat-trick at Norwich in April.
When Suarez returned to Melwood following Uruguay’s elimination from the 2012 Olympic Games football tournament, he quickly signed a new long-term contract. Manager Brendan Rogers declared: “‘I’m delighted that he has signed. I think he’s one of the top strikers in world football.
Hopefully, he was able to see our vision going forward, in terms of what we’re trying to do. He’s committed himself long-term to the club and he’s really looking forward to playing in this way of working. As a manager and for the supporters, I’m delighted because I know how important he is to them.”
A hugely-productive club season for the Uruguayan (30 goals from 44 appearances in all competitions) was marred by the biting incident against Chelsea at Anfield in April. He was subsequently banned for ten matches, the last four fixtures of 2012/13 and the first six fixtures of 2013/14.
Suarez became the first Liverpool player to score thirty goals in a season since Fernando Torres in 2007/08; and he moved on to fifty for the club when he netted in the home fixture against Tottenham Hotspur in last March.