Luis Suárez finds range at Barcelona to enhance trident’s cutting edge
|
Version 0 of 1. There was a minute to go at the end of Barcelona’s victory over Atlético Madrid last Sunday and Luis Suárez’s number was up. As he made his way to the touchline the Camp Nou rose to grant him a standing ovation. Barcelona were winning 3-1, their crisis contained for now at least, and Suárez had scored one goal and been involved in the other two, finished by Neymar and Leo Messi. A cathartic victory for the club after a week of crisis carried a personal significance too: this was recognition for the Uruguayan’s first great night. When the third goal had gone in Messi, Neymar and Suárez joined arms and celebrated together, running towards the corner. The photograph was everywhere the following day, the kind of picture they had hoped would define Barcelona this season but until then largely had not. It was a picture that carried particular significance for Suárez, almost as if it marked his definitive arrival. The goal against Atlético was only his second of the season in the league. It had taken him until the final game of 2014, his eighth for the club, to score. Although he had hit two in the Champions League, against Apoel Nicosia and Paris Saint-Germain, meaning that he has scored a goal every 85 minutes in Europe, and although he then scored against Elche in the Copa del Rey, 577 league minutes had passed without one. His coach, Luis Enrique, insisted after the game: “Scoring this will ease him.” “I was calm: I was not obsessed [with scoring] at all”,” Suárez said. But, he admitted: “I am a striker and I came here to score goals.” Suárez, who did not return from his biting ban until the ninth week of the season, has two goals in 10 league games. He has taken 24 shots in the league, 10 of them on target – barely a quarter of Cristiano Ronaldo’s total. Messi has 16 in 18 games, Neymar 12 in 15. Fewer chances have fallen than he would have liked but lack of opportunity was not the only reason that it took him until almost Christmas to score; opportunities were passed up, some of them good ones. Some of them were decisive too. Results were not good. Suárez made his debut against Real Madrid in October. Barcelona came into the game having won every match and not conceded a goal. They were beaten 3-1. They had played eight, won seven and drawn one, racking up 22 points from 24. Since Suárez’s arrival they have played nine, won five, drawn one and lost three, collecting 16 points from 27. Four times already this season Barcelona have failed to score. But no one blamed Suárez and there was no nostalgia, no lament for the departure of Alexis Sánchez, nor criticism of the Uruguayan’s signing. His lack of goals was a consequence of their malaise, not a cause, and he was rebelling against their fate at least. Barcelona had yet – and are still yet – to settle on a clear formation or style. They have played 24 games now and fielded 24 different lineups and while the forward line is the only line in the team where everyone knows who the first-choice players are, they have started together only six times in the league and even then their roles have not been defined. For Suárez, it has rarely meant playing through the middle. Early in the season Messi played a little deeper, as a No10 behind Neymar and Munir, apparently in preparation for Suárez’s return. It looked like the best way to fit the three players into a single forward line and Munir’s runs looked like Suárez’s runs. But just when Suárez returned Messi moved back up front. It may not be a coincidence that against Atlético, Suárez’s first great night and the “trident’s” best performance, Messi began on the right. Fitting the pieces together was far from simple. It rarely has been at the Camp Nou. Thierry Henry, David Villa and eventually Samuel Eto’o had to adapt; they scored fewer goals but ultimately they were successful. All three were European champions with Barcelona. Against Real Madrid in his first game Suárez lined up on the right and he has done so often since. Usually he moves across the front line but the search for space tends to take him away from the centre. That day he provided the pass from which Neymar scored the first; he then delivered the perfect ball from which Messi should have made it 2-0. Two weeks later he came on against Almería and completely changed the game, creating both goals in a 2-1 victory. Jordi Alba got one; “how well you laid it on, Luis!” he tweeted. And that was the point. Before he had scored any goals Suárez had provided four assists. Against Getafe he gave two more assists but Xavi and Pedro did not take them, Barcelona drew 0-0 and the pressure built. It felt the wrong way round. The day he scored against Córdoba, the club’s then sporting director, Andoni Zubizarreta, said: “He gives us a lot when it comes to collective play, positioning, and generating space … but strikers are always measured by goals so it is good that he scored.” Yet with Suárez it was not quite so simple. There was also something in his movement, his aggression and work rate that won them over even without goals; this was exactly what they had wanted. Xavi likened him to Samuel Eto’o for his “veracity”. One headline summed him up: “Everything but the goal.” Others considered goals only a matter of time. “It is just a quirk that he has not scored,” Luis Enrique said. When Suárez first broke into the team at Nacional, fans shouted “donkey” and “club foot” at him. He struggled to get goals to begin with in Holland too and at Liverpool; although he scored on his debut he got only four in his first 13 Premier League games. It took a while but the goals came. “In training, every ball he gets goes in,” Gerard Piqué had said. “He’ll score soon enough.” |