Few moments in Premier League history are as infamous as Luis Suarez biting Branislav Ivanovic.
Punch-ups, elbows, choke-holds and even testicle grabs have made back page headlines in recent decades, but Suarez’s chomp was the first of its kind in English football. Midway through Liverpool’s 2-2 draw with Chelsea back in April 2013 (11 years ago this Sunday), Suarez bit Ivanovic on the arm after being dispossessed by the burly Serb, but the Uruguayan got off scot free because the officials didn’t spot it.
To make matters worse, Suarez scored a 97th-minute equaliser, though compliments were in short supply at full time as footage of his vicious bite had been beamed around the world.
Word soon reached Liverpool’s players, and according to Jamie Carragher, Suarez wasn’t in a particularly honest mood. “When he came in the dressing room – I think we were starting to get things going on and things getting said to us about stuff that had gone on – Luis actually denied it at first,” he told Sky Sports in 2020.
“Maybe he hoped the cameras hadn’t picked it up.”
If Suarez wasn’t suspended at the start of the 2013/14 season would Liverpool have won the league? Let us know in the comments section below.
Suarez reportedly phoned Ivanovic the following day to apologise for his behaviour, but while the Chelsea defender admitted he appreciated the gesture, he refused to accept the actual apology.
A few days later the Reds ace was slapped with 10-match ban, and Carragher thinks the suspension cost Liverpool their maiden Premier League crown the following season.
“He missed the first four or five games of the following season,” he said. “That was the season Liverpool almost won the title, Suarez was the best player in the league. But there were two games Liverpool dropped points in, I think it was at home to Southampton they lost 1-0 and they drew away at Swansea, so there were five points dropped in the first few games and Luis Suarez didn’t play.
“And the form he was in that season, you’d have to say there was a good chance that you think he would have turned one of those games. So that act and the ban that he got actually affected Liverpool much more the next season. There wasn’t too much riding on [the previous] season.”
Biting ended up defining Suarez’s Liverpool career in many ways, not least because the club decided to sell him to Barcelona after he bit Giorgio Chiellini in a match between Uruguay and Italy at the 2014 World Cup which landed him a four-month ban from all football-related activities.
Alarmingly, it marked the third occasion that he’d bitten an opponent during a football match, having munched on PSV Eindhoven player Otman Bakkal while at Ajax in 2010.
Suarez, now at Inter Miami, won the PFA Player of the Year award in 2014 and went on to blast 198 goals in 283 for Barcelona after leaving Liverpool. And the 37-year-old’s shooting boots are still fully functioning. He has eight goals in 12 games for Miami, and bagged 29 goals for Brazilian club Gremio last year.
