Arsenal vs Barcelona: How super Luis Suarez nudged Lionel Messi aside

Uruguayan has been such a success at Barcelona that even the Argentine has changed position. All of which is ominous for Arsenal tonight

Pete Jenson
Monday 22 February 2016 20:53 GMT
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Luis Suarez arrived at Barcelona Airport on Monday and realised he had left his passport at home. Unfortunately for Arsenal, someone went back to get it for him.

With 25 goals in his last 24 games, 41 in all competitions, and 12 in his last seven matches, this is not a great time for Arsène Wenger to be facing a player he bid £40m plus £1 for in 2013.

That brief, clumsy courting of the Uruguayan would probably not have ended successfully even if the bid had been less sarcastic in its attempt to trigger a supposed release clause. Both Suarez and Liverpool were waiting for one of Europe’s three biggest clubs to come calling and subsequent events have shown they were right to believe his level was winning – not just competing in – the Champions League.

“If I had not listened to Steven Gerrard I would have made that massive mistake,” Suarez recalled in his book Crossing the Line. “We spoke about it when I went back to Melwood to collect my things [before leaving for Barcelona]. He told me: ‘You did the right thing’. It brought back memories of him saying to me: ‘Wait, play well this season, give Liverpool one more year and next year it will either be Bayern Munich or Real Madrid or Barcelona that come in for you’.

Despite the Uruguayan telling the story of Gerrard talking him around, while helping Suarez compile his autobiography I never really got the sense that he believed in the Arsenal move. It felt as if he would have found a way not to switch to London even if the two clubs had managed to agree terms.

He wanted out of England at the time and he wanted Champions League football – a move to the Emirates would only have solved one of those problems. “I would have upset the Liverpool supporters – the only ones who had always stuck by me,” he admitted in another interview before the 2014 World Cup.

His move to Spain led to him replacing Alexis Sanchez, whom Liverpool wanted but who ended up at Arsenal. And in an interview in Saturday’s Independent the Barcelona defender Javier Mascherano said he sees the similarities in the two, with that tireless running a contagious positive in any team.

But the numbers underline how one remains a notch above the other. In 80 games Suarez has scored 66 goals, with 35 assists. In 78 matches for Arsenal, Sanchez has scored 35, with 18 passes that led to goals.

Suarez has also won the Champions League medal that eluded the Chilean and has achieved something else that should probably not be underestimated – Lionel Messi has changed his position on the pitch to accommodate him.

For someone whose career has been marked by aggression, both used correctly to make him the player he is and incorrectly to land him three lengthy bans, it is maybe a peculiar contradiction that Suarez is also a player who tends to bring harmony to a home dressing room.

When Zlatan Ibrahimovic arrived at Barcelona in 2009 it was on the understanding that Messi would eventually trot back out to the right flank, allowing the Swede to become Barça’s new No 9 – it never turned out that way.

At the end of their only season together Messi was still playing through the middle and Zlatan was on the bench waiting to be sold. Sanchez also failed to find the Messi frequency on his dial and was unable to tune himself in to the best player in the world.

Suarez has been on the same wavelength as Messi from day one and within a couple of months of his first game alongside him the Argentine had initiated a change in position that meant him moving back out to the right so that Suarez could play through the middle.

It was the change that Ibrahimovic wanted and Suarez was gifted without even asking – it was during one Champions League game against Ajax after the two had at first temporarily swapped positions that Messi told Suarez to stay in the centre, where he has been ever since.

And, far from Messi’s form dipping since he gave up central striking duties, he has been more unplayable than ever during the last 12 months – none more so than when he scored one of the goals of last season in the Copa del Rey final against Athletic Bilbao last year starting from that grid position on the right wing.

Messi, who has six goals against Arsenal in four matches, remains the biggest threat to them, although this time he has to do something he has never done before and score past Petr Cech.

And Neymar’s battle with Hector Bellerin will also be key. Arsenal will not want to ignore the threat posed from Barça’s third forward. But it will be Suarez buffering up against the centre of Arsenal’s defence that Barcelona supporters hope creates the spaces that both the Brazilian and the Argentine can then expose. For all the brilliance of Neymar and Messi this is a team that revolves around Suarez.

And he enjoys taking on the English. There were tears of joy after his two Uruguay goals beat Roy Hodgson’s side in Sao Paulo at the 2014 World Cup. He says he misses the atmosphere at English grounds even though he knows much of the noise he encountered away from home was fuelled by his detractors. Wenger’s back four tonight is unlikely to contain a single Englishman but Suarez will pretend for old times’ sake, much as he did last season against Manchester City.

He does not come with anything to prove. Four trophies in his first season and a half have seen to that. The £75m price tag never did weigh very heavily on his shoulders. Just think how light Arsenal’s £40m and £1 would have felt had that improbable transfer really happened.

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