From ignominy to treble glory - How Luis Suarez turned it around this season
At the end of an exhausting but exhilarating debut season with Barcelona, Luis Suarez ended up with 26 goals to his name, a treble of trophies and all the glory he envisaged when he arrived in Catalonia from Liverpool last summer for £75 million. The Uruguayan can reflect cheerfully on what has been his most lucrative season as a professional footballer, a year in which he never gave up hope of becoming an indispensable part of the club he always dreamed of playing for.
Suarez, along with Neymar and Lionel Messi, forms one of the deadliest attacks football has ever seen. However, his first year at the Camp Nou was far from a seamless transition.
Difficult acclimatisation period for Suarez at Barcelona
After biting Giorgio Chiellini at the World Cup, Suarez was forced to wait for his Barcelona debut, training alone and finding the difficulty of adapting to a new team and culture extreme. In September, as a new reign at Barca began to take shape, Luis Enrique was forced to establish his identity as the club’s new coach without its most expensive player ever.
Then, when Suarez’ finally made his debut – in the El Clasico at the Santiago Bernabeu – the fears of a player not entirely comfortable with his new surroundings were only exacerbated as it ended in a 3-1 defeat to bitter rivals Real Madrid. Although Suarez provided the assist for Neymar after just three minutes, his performance was a shadow of the relentless brilliance that brought Liverpool agonisingly close to their first-ever Premier League crown in his final season with them.
Although he featured early on, Suarez faded as Madrid turned the derby round gallantly in their favour. It was not the derby he had dreamed of, with his involvement ended by his number nine being shown lighting up the touchline, and being replaced by Pedro. From there, the club, player and fans knew it was going to be a difficult transition.
Suarez had to wait a month for his first goal in Barca colours – in the 4-0 rout of APOEL Nicosia in the Champions League. He was off the mark, but still found goals which were strangely elusive before Christmas, despite lining up alongside the most devastating attackers in the business.
At the turn of the year, he had only managed three goals in 11 appearances, and the universal feeling was that the striker was still slightly overwhelmed by the enormous pressure heaped on the players at Barcelona.
Albert Ferrer spoke of Suarez’ dilemma for Sky Sports on Revista de la Liga in January, commenting that the player was ‘nervous and unsettled’ at realising he was no longer the star player in the starting line-up, like he had been at Anfield.
Suarez himself admitted that he had not performed to his understandably high expectations. "I hope to do a lot better,” he said as per ESPN. “I thought I lost balls that I should not lose. I did not feel comfortable with myself at any moment,” he continued, after the 5-1 win over Espanyol.
Determination and effort helped turn Suarez’s season around
However, Suarez has always displayed an unshakable resilience through the ups and down of his storied career, and he was as determined as ever to win over the hearts of the Barcelona fans. He continued to work hard and, before long, he was thriving.
Since February, Suarez has scored 20 goals in 26 appearances and recaptured the same remarkable form that persuaded Barcelona to part with an unprecedented sum of money for his services. During an ultimately ecstatic second-half of the season, Suarez completed a turnaround from footballing ignominy to trophy-laden glory, that culminated with he and his Barca team-mates conquering Europe, hoisting the Champions League aloft on one of the club’s greatest ever nights.
A watershed moment came in the victory over Atletico Madrid in January, on a night inside a packed Camp Nou, when MSN came alive. Messi, Suarez and Neymar all sparkled and struck fear into the hearts of all Barca’s future opponents.
It was, in many ways, Suarez’ birth as a Barcelona star, as he stole the show with an immense performance where he scored one and made the other two for his illustrious colleagues up front. The Suarez show helped outplay Diego Simeone’s Spanish champions and set in motion a wonderful run of form which propelled the club to a historic season.