Genius, madman... legend? Luis Suarez at Liverpool: The inside story

By Neil Jones, Liverpool Correspondent

Steven Gerrard’s message was short and to the point.

“To the best I’ve played with,” he wrote. Some praise, from perhaps THE best Liverpool has ever seen.

Kenny Dalglish’s message was equally short and to the point.

“Don’t ever change,” he wrote. Sound advice, from another Anfield great, the man Reds fans will always refer to as ‘The King’.

The recipient of those messages, of course, was Luis Suarez, who it is fair to say left quite the impression during his three-and-a-half years on Merseyside.

A madman as well as a genius, for sure, but when Gerrard and Dalglish lead your fan club, you know you have done something right.

Suarez, of course, returns to Anfield this week. He can expect a hostile reception at Wednesday’s Champions League clash with Atletico Madrid, just as he received when visiting with Barcelona in 2019, but he should not take it to heart.

Liverpool fans do not forget those who thrilled them. And few players have ever thrilled them like Suarez did.

Of course, there have been players who have played more games, scored more goals and won more trophies. Suarez left for Barca in 2014 with only one medal, the 2012 League Cup, to show for his efforts with the Reds.

He scored 82 goals in all competitions, placing him 22nd on the club’s all-time list, and 69 in the Premier League, as many as Kevin Nolan and fewer than Brian Deane, Gabby Agbonlahor or Chris Armstrong, to name just a few.

And yet he is revered, talked about alongside the many Liverpool legends of the past.

“He is simply one of the greatest players who ever played for the club,” says Jamie Carragher. “When you talk about all-time greats, he is in the top five. The goals he scored and the way he played, it was mind-blowing.”

This, then, is the story of Suarez at Anfield. The good, the bad and the ugly…

Joe Cole does not want to name names.

“I’ll save them the embarrassment,” he laughs, as he reveals that “one or two” Liverpool players were less than impressed when it was announced that Suarez was on his way to Anfield in January 2011.

The Reds had moved quickly to land him, paying just under £23 million ($32m) to take him from Ajax, where he had netted 111 goals in four seasons.

Damien Comolli, then Liverpool’s director of football, had received word from Steve Hitchen, the club’s chief scout, that Ajax were willing to sell, and that Suarez, who was serving a ban for biting PSV’s Otman Bakkal during a game, was eager to leave.

“It gave us a head-start,” said Comolli, who would also negotiate the £35m ($48m) signing of Andy Carroll from Newcastle, as well as the £50m ($69m) sale of Fernando Torres to Chelsea, that January.

It sounds strange to say, given what we know now, but it was Carroll who was viewed as the more exciting signing at the time. He was a British-record transfer, and had taken the Premier League by storm with Newcastle. He was raw, powerful and would take over the No.9 shirt vacated by Torres.

At Melwood, though, Liverpool’s players were immediately struck by the man who would wear the No.7 jersey.

“Luis came in and took our breath away on the training pitch,” says Carragher. Cole remembers speaking to Gerrard after Suarez’s first session and asking ‘how the hell have we managed to sign him?!’

“I knew from the first session that he was going to be a special, special player,” Cole tells Goal. “A few of the lads - not Stevie or Carra, I should say - were unconvinced because he was different, he was raw, but he was a special talent.

“I looked at him from day one and just thought ‘wow!”

Jay Spearing was a young midfielder who had just broken into the Liverpool first-team when Suarez arrived. He remembers being excited watching news of Suarez’s signing flash up on Sky Sports News. The following day, he drove to Melwood a little quicker and arrived a little earlier, eager to see what the new-boy was all about.

He was not disappointed.

“His first training session set the tone for everything,” Spearing says. “He was just a winner. He was incredible.

“I was very fortunate to train with both Suarez and Torres, and if I had to choose one over the other, I’d always pick Suarez. Day to day, he was 100 miles an hour, commitment, desire, work-rate, winning mentality. He never changed, and his performances were just unreal.”

Suarez officially signed for Liverpool, on January 31, and on February 2 he was named on the bench for a Premier League game with Stoke City at Anfield.

Eighteen minutes into the second half he replaced Fabio Aurelio, and 16 later he had his first Reds goal, latching onto Dirk Kuyt’s pass, rounding goalkeeper Asmir Begovic and squeezing home a finish in front of the Kop.

‘King Luis’ dream debut’, roared the back page of the Liverpool Echo.

Reds fans had found themselves a new hero.

Speak to those who have worked with Suarez, and a clear picture emerges. One of a quiet character, reserved and family-obsessed, but who is transformed as soon as he sets foot on a football field.

“He is the ultimate competitor,” says Tom Brewitt, a young defender who remembers Suarez chasing him “like a man possessed” after accusing him of taking an extra touch during a pressing drill.

Others recall a running battle with Tom Anderson, a 20-year-old Burnley centre-back, during a behind-closed-doors friendly at Melwood, in which Suarez was accused of a headbutt. The footage from that stoppage-time clash, mysteriously, was absent from the DVD which was sent to players afterwards.

Suarez’s temper, and the darker side of his character, is evidenced by the fact that he missed 19 games through suspension during his time at Liverpool, despite never being shown a red card.

Eight of those came, of course, after the racism row with Patrice Evra, which erupted after a game against Manchester United at Anfield in October 2011. Suarez was fined £40,000 after the Football Association found him guilty of “using insulting words which included reference to Mr Evra’s colour”. He denied the charges, and received strong support from Dalglish and his Liverpool team-mates, who wore T-shirts bearing Suarez’s face before an away match at Wigan.

Years later, Carragher and Peter Moore, then the Reds’ chief executive, would apologise to Evra for the club’s behaviour.

The row would continue when Liverpool and United met in the return fixture at Old Trafford in January 2012. Suarez had served his ban by then, but infuriated Evra and United by refusing to shake the defender’s hand before the game. Sir Alex Ferguson called him “a disgrace to Liverpool Football Club” and insisted he should not be allowed to play for the club again. “He could have caused a riot,” claimed the United boss.

Downing, who played that day, sheds further light on events.

“Just before half-time, the ball landed with him,” he remembers. “The whistle goes and he just blasts the ball at the United dugout. Straight at them.

“He was taking the whole ground on. He just didn’t care!”

Downing was also present for Suarez’s other big controversial moment at Anfield, the day he bit Chelsea’s Branislav Ivanovic in April 2013.

“We didn’t know about it until after the game,” he says. “Then it came out what he’d done and he was like ‘yeah, I did!’

“He just had that switch. Ivanovic had done quite well against him that day, taking the ball off him. He just lost his head in that split second and regretted it.

“That’s just the way he was. He played on the edge. To him, it’s about doing anything to win.”

Suarez was banned for 10 games for the Ivanovic incident, encompassing the final weeks of the 2012-13 season and the opening games of the following campaign

In between, he caused a further stir by attempting, rather crudely, to negotiate a move away from Anfield.

First, he flirted with Real Madrid. He claimed he was being hounded by the UK media, that he was “Public Enemy No.1” and “under siege” from paparazzi. He had to get out of England, he insisted, for the sake of his family.

Soon after, the story had changed. Arsenal were interested, and had been made aware of a clause in Suarez’s contract which would allow him to leave if a bid of more than £40m ($55m) was tabled.

And so the Gunners offered £40m plus £1, prompting a famous tweeted response from John W Henry, the Liverpool owner.

“What do you think they’re smoking over at Emirates?” he wrote.

Dick Law, Arsenal’s chief transfer negotiator, would later tell Goal that the bid was merely “a trigger”, aimed at starting negotiations between the two clubs.

“Nobody at Arsenal expected to sign Suarez for £40m,”he said, “but maybe Liverpool would have sold for £45m?”

They did not, despite Suarez giving an interview in which he accused Brendan Rodgers, the Liverpool manager, of breaking a promise to let him leave if the Reds failed to secure Champions League football (they finished seventh in Rodgers’ first season in charge, 2012-13).

“It is not as if I am asking to move to a local rival,” Suarez pleaded. Rodgers responded by banishing him from training.

It took Gerrard’s intervention to smooth relations. The captain spoke to Suarez, convincing him to stay another year. Arsenal, he told him, was not the place to be.

A couple of days later, and after a meeting with Rodgers at which Gerrard was present, Suarez returned to training.

“He was like a man possessed,” Gerrard remembers. “Brendan and I just grinned at each other as we watched him. Luis Suarez was back, and so were Liverpool.”