Luis Suárez had to be the match-winner. In a game that could only be described as ‘scrappy’ to avoid the designation of ‘dirty,’ the hero of the night had to be the truest master of the dark arts. The narrative had no other choice but to bow to him.
Luis Suárez beat Atlético Madrid at its own game
Can the masters of turning soccer games into calculated fights complain about Luis Suárez sticking two past them and swindling the referee?
David Ramos/Getty Images
Suárez should have been sent off for both kicking out at Juanfran and then slapping Filipe Luis. But he’s not dumb. The critical aspect of being a proper bastard, of being an unrepentant cheat, is being intelligent. It’s no wonder that studies have found that as children mature and become more intelligent, they also begin to lie and deceive more. Or that individuals in our highest offices often exhibit sociopathic tendencies.
If you are to be reductive, he is a cheat. But he gets away with it because he does these vicious things when the referee’s attention is compromised. That way, when his victim reacts and cries for justice, only the gods of instant replay can hear his screams. And they are powerless in world football.
On the other hand, when the referee is attentive, Suárez makes sure to emphasize every transgression against him, to the point that the viewer is both insulted and drawn to sympathy. After all, if a man is so delusional to believe himself the victim, if he’s that unapologetic and steadfast about his view of the events, against the evidence to the contrary, then the viewer either starts to question his/her own perception of things or begins to feel sorry for a man obviously afflicted with amnesia.
So: Suárez is awful and dirty. That’s a truth. Another truth is that Atlético Madrid have no high horse to mount in order to complain of it. At least not in a game that was reduced to fouls, bickering and time-wasting, all according to the Rojiblancos’ plans. They created the horrible stage because it suited them. This was their world, the one that they thrive in.
If we are to also reduce an entire team and their style of play, we can say that Atlético thrive on negativity. Their intention is to limit. They hunt in packs to limit space for midfielders. They foul intentionally to limit chances at their goal and the effectiveness of the other team’s best players. They also limit the time afforded to actual gameplay by wasting as much of it as possible.
(Jan Oblak, their keeper, was even given a warning for taking too long with a goal-kick in the first half. The first half!)
Another obvious sign of this negativity is choosing to play on the counterattack, and Atléti do it better than anyone else in world football. A 1-0 (87th minute, Antoine Griezmann) score-line must be as exciting to Diego Simeone as Koke's foul on Lionel Messi to stop the Argentine at full speed.
This style, though, is only negative if you willfully ignore the context that breeds it.
Our immediate reaction, molded by romance and purism, tells us that defending deep, fouling players purposely, limiting the actual football played and bringing the clock into the foreground as a player in events, is not only frustrating, but disgusting. Teams should play the game, not ruin it.
But it works, and that’s the only true morality of football.
It suits Simeone and his manic-aggressive personality, as well as Atlético’s players and their inhuman, almost machine-like fluidity and work ethic. And most importantly, it is the perfect representation of the working class nature of the club itself. Atléti do not have the money of the Barcelonas. They’re a selling club, so their style creates an environment where the players can easily be replaced while continuing team success. You can only do with what you have, and the team shouldn’t play in an open, suicidal fashion to please detractors, to offer themselves up as sacrificial lambs for idealism.
Atlético's cynical tactics only work because, as said before, their players are very intelligent. The enemy of intelligence isn't ignorance, it's naivete, so Suárez's savvy found its counterpoint in Fernando Torres, the night's fool.
The striker had struggled early, but managed to score in the first half. This made him confident and eager, but worst of all it made him boisterous. He wanted to impress his manager. He wanted to be the hero. But in a team like Atlético where heroes are born out of teamwork, not individuality, that aspiration is fatal.
Before we get into how Sergio Busquets undressed Torres, we have to talk about Barcelona's shroud of idealism. In the same fashion that cynicism is extreme for Atléti, so is the delusional belief in ideals for Barca. The notion that their way is the right way to play the game, and that the club is above the tactless nature of most others. That these beliefs, classiness and morality, are not to be sacrificed or mortgaged at any cost.
Yet the team history (which we won't deal with) and, more viscerally, the current players, reveal the opposite. Javier Mascherano would feel right at home in the Atlético Madrid lineup. He's as much of Diego Simeone the player as he is Argentine, one in the long line of tactical destroyers.
Suárez and his body of work speak, bite, elbow and dive for themselves.
And then there’s the inconspicuous puppeteer, Busquets. Beyond being the best midfielder in the world, he’s also an absolute bastard. His own history shows many events of exaggeration, of bought fouls and, most notably, being ‘professional’ in situations to disrupt the other team’s flow. He’s also not above instilling fear into an opponent with an errant limb. It’s not the vivid, brash style of Koke, but it’s there just as much.
Barcelona has players that do the same things as Atlético, just under a brand that pushes an insistent propaganda that they don’t.
Now, what Busquets did to Torres was incredible.
The Spaniard was on a yellow and eager to impress, and so Busquets baited him. Receiving the ball at the halfway line, the midfielder took a ‘bad touch,’ which is only believable if you think that’s possible for him. Torres, excited, lost his senses and jumped to win it. He was late and fouled the midfielder who had waited till the absolute last second to pass the ball.
The consequent yellow and red were deserved and Torres had only himself to blame.
That sending off then set the stage for the ultimate trickster, Suárez. Because being cynical isn’t the same as being pessimistic or defeatist -- it’s knowing the chaos around you, then embracing it and working within it.
With Barcelona pressuring and Atlético increasingly defending deeper, the goals had to come. The question was who would score them? But as the game went on and got rougher, as the fouls piled up, Suárez grew larger in stature. He came alive. In typical fashion, he began to whine, to dive, to kick at and to slap defenders, and embracing all of the darkness within himself and the game, he scored. Twice.
Atlético Madrid's players can complain. It is their right. But the truth of the matter is that they were outdone at their own game. Their intentions were clear from the start of the game: they would destabilize Barcelona, and turn the game into a fight. The only trouble with this was that they were also unintentionally building the stage for the cynics, the bastards of Barcelona to shine. And none is, for better or worse, bigger than Luis Suárez.
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