Well remembered ex-Arsenal defender Lauren has identified that what his becalmed former club need right now is someone with a bit of character about them. Someone who scores goals. Someone who definitely doesn’t bite people. And as it happens there is one such character who fills at least two of these stipulations with ease- the tremendously gifted Luis Suarez.
Said Lauren: “Sometimes a charismatic figure in the team can affect the rest of the players. I like South American strikers – Carlos Tevez, Gonzalo Higuain – players that always give full commitment.
Suarez, too. He scores goals, he comes back to defend, he’s got ambition and hunger – the player has to be charismatic so that the players in the dressing room look up to him like he’s an icon.”
The decisively influential Uruguayan joined Barcelona in 2013, and has been an unarguably world class component of the team, a tremendous footballer who this season has scored 54 goals across all competitions, and who, if such a thing were possible, enhances the Catalan club’s already profound star quality.
And therein, perhaps, lies the problem with Lauren’s comments- it’s difficult to see why Suarez would be keen to swap what he’s got in Catalonia for the opportunity to join a team that inevitably finishes third or fourth in their domestic league, while exiting the Champion’s League in the knock out stages. Every year.
Don’t forget also that in the year that Suarez left Liverpool for Barcelona, a bid came in for him from Arsenal, and it was, hilariously, 40 million plus one pound. That was the price of his buy-out clause plus a single, solitary extra pound. Hardly a statement of intent, more an understated Gallic act of trolling. It was certainly funny, but didn’t have anyone making plans to get the Uruguayan star’s name on the back of a red and white shirt.