| pastro243 said: Suárez is scum, Im chilean and in the last WC qualifiers match we played Uruguay, he punched a player in the face, dived like hell, kicked another one and hit the keeper in a corner kick. He only got a yellow card but the whole stadium was singing things against him while we were winning. |
You forgot to mention how that chilean player Jara provoked Suárez by grabbing his genitals... Something that even the press in your country recognized.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vd75WPtS4pY
Anyway... I'm not going to defend Suárez actions here or some other things he has done which are pretty much inexcusable (and he should be penalized accordingly, of course), but I think it's quite unfair how he has been singled out as if he were the worst of the worst when there's plenty of other players that have done similar things before or worse. And with all the cases of violence and corruption that surround football all over the world, you would think the FIFA or the media in general would put at least as much emphasis on those as they do with him.
And he is definitely not racist. His grandfather was black and he had played lots of times with black players here in Uruguay and in Holland without any problem before Evra. In fact, our national team has black players and he never had a problem with them, or anyone else for that matter.
What people from other countries don't know is that the word "negro" that Suárez used in that incident is not inherently derogative here. There's no equivalent for the word "nigger" in Spanish and "negro" is literally "black", which of course can be used in a variety of ways. And in our country (and in Argentina as well), "negro" is often used as a merely descriptive term or even a term of endearment, used by couples or relatives for example. Suárez's grandmother even stated already to English media how she called him "mi negrito" (diminutive of the word "negro") when he was a child. It's also very common in football, with many black players here (and some "mixed" ones even) having it as a nickname, including some of our most beloved figures, like Obdulio Varela ("el negro jefe"/"the black chief/boss") who won the World Cup of 1950 for us (at a time where there were no black players in England, at least that I know of...) or Luis Cubilla (similarly called "el negro") who won several international cups with our two most popular teams.
For the record, I'm not claiming that my country is inmune to racism or anything of the sort, but just that the differences in culture and history have to be taken into account here. You can't evaluate Suárez's comments without their context, and that includes what I'm stating here. And on a related note, it's ridiculous to me how much importance many people put on words compared to the actual acts of violence in general...
All this will probably fall on deaf ears (as apparently happened already with Gustavo Poyet's statements before...) but whatever... At least I tried...
PS: The refusal to shake Evra's hand came after the initial controversy, when Suárez was still upset about it. Claiming that he did it "because he's black" as the OP states is not even taking into account the chronology of events. It's a mistake at best and deliberately misleading at worst...
