The Footballer and The Madman

If you are a medical student, have read Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, or are an avid movie-watcher, you would know what a Split / Multiple Personality Disorder is. Also known as the Dissociative Identity Disorder, this extremely rare mental disease is described by Wikipedia to be characterized by at least two distinct and relatively enduring identities or dissociated personality states that alternately control a person’s behavior. You look at Liverpool’s main striker, Luis Suarez, and you cannot help but wonder if he is not suffering from the very same disease mentioned above.

Suarez is an exceptional footballer, and when on song, he can rip apart any defense in the world. But when he signed for Liverpool from Ajax in the winter of 2011, he brought not just his prolific goalscoring ability but also his history of scandals and controversial incidents along with himself. In the summer of 2010, at the grand stage of the World Cup quarterfinal against Ghana with the game tied at 1-1 in extra time, Suarez stopped Dominic Adiyiah’s goal-bound header with his hand. He was sent off but stayed on the touchline and celebrated Asamoah Gyan’s missed penalty before walking down the tunnel. Even though Suarez admitted after the match that he had acted out of instinct, he clearly did not regret it, as he proclaimed his act to have redefined the ‘hand of god’ expression, which is used to refer to the goal Maradona scored with his hand against England in the 1986 World Cup.

After he moved to Liverpool, Suarez’s apparently unexplained moments of madness continued in England, as he kicked Micheal Dawson who was down on the ground and attacked Scott Parker with a cross-body kick to the chest in separate games. In another match against Manchester United, Suarez again sparked controversy by pulling on Rafael Da Silva’s curly hair. All this time however, the phenomenal footballer Suarez was omnipresent too, as he regularly kept scoring for Liverpool.

The bad boy attitude, however, showed in his goal celebrations too, as he once gave Fulham fans ‘the finger’ after scoring, and celebrated another goal against Everton by diving in front of toffees manager David Moyes, who had earlier made comments saying Suarez ‘had a history of diving’. Things came to a head when in October 2011, in a fight with Patrice Evra during a match against United, Suarez allegedly racially abused the French right-back. He was found guilty of the charge and banned for 8 matches. Despite the ban, Suarez finished the season with a healthy tally of 12 goals.

In the 2012-13 season, Suarez’s first controversial incident was when he deliberately and disgracefully handed a ball before scoring a winner against Mansfield Town in the FA Cup. Apart from this incident, Suarez’s season was going well, as the phenomenal footballer scored 23 goals in the League and 30 in all competitions. The madman Suarez however, had been quiet for too long, and he resurfaced in a match at Anfield against Chelsea. Inside the Chelsea box, without any reason or provocation, Suarez took hold of Branislav Ivanovic’s hand and clearly took a bite full of it, to the horror of everyone who saw. The video went viral and Suarez was banned for ten games, while the panel that had charged him, criticized him for not realizing the seriousness of his senseless deed.

Suarez is back playing in the Liverpool team after the ban, after a summer of intense transfer speculation, where he himself asked the club for a transfer, before taking a u-turn and stating he wanted to stay at the club. But the whole footballing world is just waiting for when the madman Suarez reemerges from the depths, and does something utterly foolish again. It is only a matter of time before England grows weary of this man-child’s shenanigans and asks him to move on and take his Split Personality Disorder to another league and country.