Even when Luis Suarez plays his football to strictly vegetarian principles, as has been the case since he made a third and — we trust — last supper of Italy defender Giorgio Chiellini during the 2014 World Cup, he is not the most likeable of players. But you’d want him on your side.
He got Uruguay to the semi-finals in 2010 by fair means as well as the foul hand that confounded Ghana. He did most to inspire Liverpool’s best domestic title campaign since 1990 and has been almost as big a fish in the vast pond that is Barcelona.
Suarez is, quite simply, a great competitor, a tireless castigation of every footballer tempted to think he can take it easy, and for that reason he’s my player of 2015.
Suarez could more than get by on his finishing. He could waltz into the second rank of Champions League forwards. But that is nowhere near enough for him. And it is this infectious enthusiasm that means he deserved — as clubmates Lionel Messi and Neymar said — to have been on the Ballon d’Or shortlist with them and Cristiano Ronaldo.
He makes his fellow Barcelona maestros even better just as, in a different way, Xavi did. He lifts a team and such characters have never been more rare. He may still carry gamesmanship too far from time to time — and used to do it all the time — and the stain of what he was supposed to have said to Patrice Evra will never quite disappear.
But Suarez, as much as anyone in a year during which Messi has suffered both injury and doubts about whether Barcelona remains the right place for him, has kept the club at the forefront. As Luis Enrique has tweaked the team’s style, Suarez, by serving Neymar, has restored the old air of indomitability. We’ll see who wins the Ballon d’Or on January 11. But it should have been a shortlist of four.
