John McCormick with something to get your teeth into
Down here in Liverpool the red half of the city reveres Louis Suarez. They see it as no surprise that Liverpool FC achieved their highest ever PL position, not to mention winning the League cup and making the FA cup final, when he was there. They don’t forget he was their highest scorer for three consecutive seasons. But what they seem to remember more than this, or his undoubted skill, is his will to win. During his time at Liverpool Louis Suarez fought for everything, never gave up and lifted the team around him. He deserves massive respect for that and he still gets it.
This should really have preceded Malcolm Dawson’s short, timely piece on the Luis Suarez biting incident. Monsieur Salut had assorted domestic crises, a heavy extractor fan falling in the middle of the night to smash the hob and my Mac’s refusal to accept the valid password for wifi access being only two of them. So here, out of sequence but welcome, are Jeremy Robson‘s thoughts on footballer’s teeth invading footballer’s flesh …
Here’s a Salut! Reflections exclusive. We had a mole at the full dress rehearsal of David Moyes’s pre-derby team talk and it went something like this …
The downfall of Lance Armstrong has set people thinking and talking about sporting cheats. Salut! Sunderland has banged on about it for years, earning the admiration of some readers but irritating others. Trying to con the referee is admittedly on a different scale to the systematic use of performance-enhancing drugs*, but it is a scourge of modern football all the same. For a partisan site to campaign on such issues and keep a straight face, it has to be willing to recognise the blatant Gyan (often), Bent (sometimes) or Larsson (at Wolves) dive just as clearly as it sees it in opponents, and we have tried to be consistent. Our friend out west, Robert Simmons, believes football could learn a useful lesson from his side of the pond …
£70,000 a week, you probably have to accept more scrutiny than most.
Luis Suarez is such an individual. After his appalling dive to con a referee and win a penalty against Arsenal today, he seemed to have claimed rights to the famous cheating question, posed by Salut! Sunderland to an opposing supporter before each SAFC game, for the rest of the season.
Poor old Mick: this'll knock you back only £4.50 at Amazon***
Mick McCarthy, the latest Premier manager to be sacked this season following the dismissals of Steve Bruce and Neil Warnock, is a man many Sunderland supporters hold in high esteem.
The nation has laughed. The Premier League has done its best to stop the laughter spreading by trying to force YouTube to block every clip. Pete Sixsmith, on the other hand, knows the full story of Jarvis the Sunderland-supporting spaniel. How he gets from there to Suarez would take longer to explain …
Have we reached the stage where the art of cheating should be taught to children as no more than a basic technique of football? Examine the differing reactions to Suarez (because he gloated), Neuer (because he denied an Englishman) and Jeremy Robson (because his young lad was the one taking liberties). Is there, Jeremy wonders, just a spot of hypocrisy in our approach to bending the rules? …
Following up on the article from last week about goal line technology, a lot of the debate here on Salut! Sunderland has extended from “righting the wrongs”, resulting from poor officiating, through to a more comprehensive analysis of the problems associated with cheating, which from here on in may be referred to as “Suarezing” or “being Suarezed”.
Bill Taylor, pictured on a visit to St Tropez, has probably watched as much World Cup football as most. From out west in Toronto, he’s enthused, criticised and slumbered – whichever response has seemed appropriate – his way through the competition. But some of the downright dishonesty he’s seen has left a nasty taste in the mouth. You can take it as read that this is not the last, but the first, Salut! Sunderand piece that will examine the cheating side of football …
If this World Cup has proved anything, it’s how rotten football has become at international level.
Image: Mike Baird
