Suárez, a gunman for a League

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The clock passed 7:50 pm. Simeone ran through Zorrilla’s band with her arms raised, triumphant gesture, gaze at the sky. Felipe, the same, with a scarf tied around his head. Jumping. Infinite “champions, champions” cry. But, in the midst of this celebration among an ocean of violet seats, a man hardened in a thousand battles remains seated on the grass. Only. With the phone in hand and crying like the Valladolid footballers cry, who in this match have certified their relegation to Second. Different tears, however, are those of that man. Happy tears. Tears of liberation. Tears of comfort. His name is Luis Suárez. They call it The gunman. He is Uruguayan and 21 goals have come from his boots that have helped Simeone raise his arms in triumph, for Felipe to tie that scarf on his head, for his teammates to shout that “champions.” That will forever be one of the images of the 11th Atletico League. Luis Suárez crying like a child while talking to his family about the title achieved in Valladolid.

They told him it was finished. They called him old. They pushed him away. His history at Atleti began like this, after that at Barcelona, ​​where in six seasons he played 283 games, scored 198 goals, gave 97 and became the third highest scorer in his history. But a call from Koeman, his coach, of just 30 seconds that summer of 2020 ended his history culé in the most abrupt way. I would no longer train with the first team, I had to do it alone, in a neighboring field, as if he were just another footballer, anybody, not the history of the club. “I do not forget that in the preseason they sent me aside,” the player would admit this October to TVE. With that pain he traveled to Madrid, after Cholo called him.

The possibility of his signing was, for the Argentine coach, the piece that his squad lacked to try to assault what he had already achieved in 2014, the league title embraced by another Uruguayan at the Camp Nou: Diego Godín. “When the option came up, the club called me and I laughed and said: Are you serious? We’re going like crazy for him”, the technician later revealed in an interview in ESPN Argentina. The words he said to Suárez were: “Look Luis, we have to win and you you want win. “A perfect conjunction that was played on the grass as soon as 2020-21 began. Luis Suárez’s history at Atlético began as Simeone expected: with goals.

There were two in their debut, to start the season with a win (6-1), against Granada, which was followed by a first round of record, with 50 points achieved out of 57 possible. Champion’s rhythm tied to the boots of a Uruguayan who only knows how to win. He keeps in the showcases of his particular museum five of the seven leagues that he has played since arriving in Spain, at Barça, in 2014, six as culé and 2021-22 as rojiblanco. In total his goals were 21, at 0.66 per game. Three from a header, three from penalties, five with the left foot and 13 with the right foot. After that first round, there was a bump, two games against Levante that changed the team’s pace. The soft mattress from which they watched the competition from the top of the table was running out of padding, thread by thread, until reaching the last two days with all or nothing at stake with Real Madrid. Another mistake and LaLiga would be white. The gunman He had been without gunpowder for two months. Against Alavés, on March 21, it had been his last goal, number 19. Later, a muscle injury that left him blank for three games and four on the green but blank on the scoreboard.

Osasuna was the penultimate rival of Atlético LaLiga in the past. And before Osasuna, Suarez’s boot woke up, came back. Atlético won 2-1 to face the last game, that of Zorrilla with the title in his hand … If he won. For a moment, it seemed not. For a very long moment: at minute 18 Óscar Plano snatched the last sheet of the mattress from the rojiblancos to stamp them with harsh reality. LaLiga, which had started with a 6-1 win over Granada, two goals from Suárez and a 50-point first round, no longer existed, would be won by Madrid. Atlético went to rest ruminating on that. When he returned, the toe of a boot rebelled against that fate. His was another. And it was full of honeys. Ángel Correa tied the game in the 57th minute. Ten later, the score was it turned around completely, to 1-2. And Suárez had to be the author of that goal, Atlético’s last in the 2020-21 season. It had to be him. It was written. “I believe in karma”, the player would wield in that interview with TVE last October, “destiny, that of being despised, that destiny that will have the end it will have to have”. A final with him crying, on the grass, with another Liga on his boot.

The scarred man wiped his eyes and a smile broke out on his face like the sun that just rises and fills everything with light. “The title is special because of the situation that I had to live, the way they looked down on me and Atlético opened the doors for me“, he asserted right after before the microphone of Movistar +. “I will always be grateful to Atlético. We have suffered, both my wife and my children, the year that most.” His wife, Sofía Balbi; his children, Delfina, Lautaro and Benjamin. The people with whom he spoke on the phone from the center of the grass of Zorrilla, while he cried, they cried … with extreme happiness. Seven months after that, the awards keep coming. In AS 2021, Suárez receives the award, as Godín and Forlán did before, rojiblancos symbols, from the América AS Sports Award. U-ru-gua-yo.