Liverpool FC: Luis Suarez Scores Yet Another Hat-Trick for Uruguay

Luis Suarez, who plays in England for Liverpool Football Club, scored yet another hat-trick for his national team Uruguay on Wednesday evening. Suarez now has 31 international goals in 55 games played for his country. Uruguay ran out eventual winners 6-4 against Chile in the friendly that was to be initially played on May 9 but was cancelled. 

Napoli forward Edinson Cavani also scored two while Gaston Ramirez—once linked to Liverpool this summer—provided two assists for the Copa America champions. 

Suarez has been in hot form for Uruguay for the last few years ever since he made a name for himself at the 2010 World Cup for good and bad reasons. In his last 18 games for Uruguay, Suarez has scored 12 goals and notched up five assists. 

Chile, in fact, is one of his favorite opponents.

Uruguay’s South American counterparts would be close to actually loathing Suarez’s presence on the football field against them. El Pistolero, as he is also known as, has now scored seven times in his last two meetings against Chile.

People who are awestruck by that stat and still wondering if that is a typo will be pleased to know that Suarez actually struck all four goals in Uruguay’s 4-0 demolition of Chile in November 2011. While the encounter yesterday night was a friendly, the one in November was a World Cup qualifier.

Suarez was criticized for his poor finishing for Liverpool last season. Though that was true to an extent, he was ironically Liverpool’s top scorer. What was more was that he had 17 goals and six assists in all competitions for Kenny Dalglish’s side in a season that saw him serve a nine-match ban. That is almost a quarter of the league season to be out of action despite being fit.

Suarez will be hoping to better his goal return for Liverpool to a similar extent to what he has accomplished with Uruguay.

Just to set a benchmark, Pele scored 77 goals in 92 games for Brazil. Diego Maradona scored 34 in 91 while Lionel Messi has 26 in 70 games. To reiterate, Luis Suarez has 31 already in 55 games. Is he a little underrated? According to me, he is, although if he is able to win trophies that may change.

Strange world we live in. Without trophies, even Pele might have been regarded as just good. A reason for that might be that only trophies highlight a team or a player to the world.

And the world consists of millions who turn on their TV sets to watch the sport only during major tournaments. The purists make up a very small percentage of football watchers. There may be your basic underlying reason for such anomalies.