The Fifa secretary general, Jérôme Valcke, has urged Luis Suárez to seek professional help and confirmed his previous biting offences were taken into account when deciding his unprecedented ban.
Despite Suárez’s Italian victim, Giorgio Chiellini, declaring the four-month ban from all football excessive and support for the Uruguayan from Diego Maradona among others, Valcke said he applauded the decision. “I think he should find a way to stop doing it,” said Valcke. “He should go through a treatment. I don’t know if one exists but he should do something for himself because it is definitely wrong.
“If it’s the first time it’s an incident, if it starts to be more than once it is not an incident. That is why the sanction has to be exemplary.”
The event occurred during Uruguay’s win over Italy and is the third time Suárez has been punished for biting during his career. As his team-mates trained in Rio before their last-16 game with Colombia, the player arrived back in Montevideo.
Liverpool moved to quash suggestions from Suárez’s lawyer, Alejandro Balbi, that the club would meet with his agent, Pere Guardiola, in Barcelona. It is understood that the Liverpool chief executive, Ian Ayre, remains in close contact with Guardiola but there are no plans for any of the club’s officials or lawyers to travel to Spain.
Liverpool are still waiting to see the full written verdict of the Fifa disciplinary panel and for the outcome of the Uruguayan FA’s appeal before consulting with lawyers and deciding their next move. However, the club’s American owners are believed to be adamant that Suárez will not be sold on the cheap to Barcelona. His new contract has a buy-out clause believed to be around £80m.
Valcke defended the punishment meted out to Suárez, which also includes a nine-game international ban and a 100,000 Swiss francs (£66,000) fine, despite the fact that it punishes Liverpool for an offence committed on international duty. The international players’ union, FifPro, has questioned why Liverpool should be affected by the ban and said Fifa should have included treatment and rehabilitation as part of the sanction.
“It is not Liverpool who have been punished, it is the player who has been punished,” Valcke said. “They took into account the past behaviour of Luis Suárez. They made a decision based on the evidence of what Suárez had done.”
Echoing the verdict of the disciplinary committee’s chairman, Claudio Sulser, Valcke said the player had to face a hefty punishment because players were expected to set an example. “It is not just about this incident, it was seen by hundreds of millions of people,” he said. “It is not what you want your kids, the little ones who are playing football all around the world, to see when football is being played at the level of the World Cup. I applaud the decision made by the committee to sanction the player because what he did was unacceptable and that is not the image we want to give to the world.”
Maradona, no stranger to controversy himself, backed Suárez, wearing a T-shirt with a message of support for the striker and said the “unjust judgment” was the verdict of an “incredible mafia”.
“The Fifa sanction is shameful, they have no sensitivity towards the fans, they may as well handcuff him and throw him in Guantánamo,” said Maradona, who appeared on television wearing a T-shirt bearing the message: “Luis, we are with you.”
“The sanction on Luis is a way of punishing Uruguayan clubs for asking Conmebol [the South American confederation] for a fairer share of money. It hurts that they have cut short the career of a lad who is a winner. It’s an excessive suspension – Fifa cannot talk about morals to anyone.”
Chiellini also expressed his sympathy for Suárez and said in a statement on his website the punishment was excessive, adding: “At the moment my only thought is for Luis and his family, because they will face a very difficult time.”
An appeal is being lodged against the decision and Balbi said they would take the case all the way to the court of arbitration for sport (Cas) and that he remained in constant contact with Liverpool. “The ban is absolutely disproportionate considering what Luis did,” he told the Spanish radio station, Cadena Cope. “Julio Grondona, Fifa vice-president, told me he had never seen such a serious ban handed to a player. This is so grotesque and absurd that Cas will have to revoke this unjust ruling.
“Unjust not just due to the number of games given, which is already incredible, illogical and arbitrary, but also the issue of not being able to be allowed to have any relationship with football in 120 days, and then there’s the fine. All that was missing was life imprisonment. We are in constant contact with Liverpool and we are ready to fight until the end.”
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