The Year of Suarez: La Liga's Kings Messi and Ronaldo Have a Challenger

It started with a lashed first-time strike, featured the finishing touch to a characteristic team move and ended with a thumping free-kick. By day's end, the look of the scoreboard was familiar and this all felt so routine.

That's the thing: This shouldn't feel as such, but it does.

Luis Suarez says he takes no notice of statistics, but there comes a point when the rest of us can't help but take notice for him. On Saturday, his hat-trick in Barcelona's 6-2 thrashing of Real Betis took him to 17 goals in his last six league games, building on his rampant finish to last season when he scored 14 in five to push Barcelona to the league title.

These sorts of giddying numbers have become a thing for Barcelona, of course, but Suarez is beginning to enter a statistical space that only two men have occupied until now: Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo.

No one needs reminding of that pair's feats, so let's stick with Suarez. Last season, the Uruguayan eclipsed them both in the scoring charts, finishing with 40 in the league and 59 overall. This is the sort of output Messi and Ronaldo have been producing year on year since 2010, but historically it's still immensely significant.

Beyond La Liga's all-conquering pair, no one in Spain had ever hit the 40-goal mark in the league before. Not Alfredo Di Stefano. Not Telmo Zarra. Not Hugo Sanchez. Not Ronaldo, the Brazilian one. Not Romario.

It's true that La Liga hasn't always been a 38-game affair and that the likes of Di Stefano and Zarra might have got there in another era, but the fact still stands.

Suarez is doing what few men ever have.

Not that you'd know it listening to him.

Suarez often talks of himself and his game as being limited. Typically, he deflects acclaim away from himself and onto Messi with almost reverential terms, considering himself a product of graft rather than talent and projecting a message of "it's them, and then me."

Ahead of last season's Copa del Rey final against Sevilla, he described Barcelona's front three that also includes Neymar as "two roosters and a chick" to beIN Sports (h/t Sport). He refers to himself as the chick.

"It doesn't annoy me because I know it. I know my limits," he added. "When Messi and Neymar start to do things with the ball in training, I prefer to leave so I don't get in the way."

Such comments are not part of a facade from Suarez. He's aware of his abilities but, to an extent, concurrently considers himself to be a beneficiary of his environment. If that's true, the inverse also is.

It shouldn't be forgotten that the season prior to the Uruguayan's arrival was a stale and underwhelming outlier in Barcelona's post-2008 era of supremacy. Those 12 months in 2013-14 were ones in which the Catalans had grown familiar in a negative sort of way, ending it all empty-handed amid a growing feeling of this is it.

But Suarez changed things. Coinciding with the arrival of Luis Enrique as manager, the striker has come to embody Barcelona's stylistic shift and has given them qualities they hadn't had in such abundance before. They are now faster from front to back, can counter-attack as well as anyone and can inflict major damage in a kind of "less is more" existence.

It goes beyond style, too. Suarez has given Barcelona a renewed edginess, a combative side. Always battling and scrapping, relentlessly physical and utterly painful to play against, he's given Barcelona what might simply be termed "something else."

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In this respect, Barcelona's capacity to compete on a physical level as well as a footballing one has too often been underestimated. But Suarez has taken it to a new level again, and everyone around him benefits.

Either side of him, Messi and Neymar have spaces opened for them by Suarez. His runs drag defenders out of a position, but perhaps more than anything, his physicality weighs on opponents, wearing them down and eating away at their will to compete because of his appetite to outwork them as well as outplay them. Few forwards enjoy that more than him, and at times he operates like a supremely talented pinball.

It's always been a part of Suarez, and now the numbers are matching the work.

For 12 months now, a shift in dynamic has been unfolding at the Camp Nou. The former Liverpool star is increasingly becoming the finisher, with Messi evolving into chief creator or some sort of sumptuous halfway point between himself and Xavi. In that respect, Messi's influence is perhaps growing wider: He's pulling teams out of shape, creating mismatches, beginning attacking sequences and being a nightmare to track. It already was, but suddenly Messi's game feels more complete than ever.

So how is Suarez a challenger?

Stylistically and in terms of multifaceted dominance, he's not and likely never will be. Across the country in the capital, the sheer size of Ronaldo's body of work is staggering, too, and Suarez's career as a whole won't reach such a height. But where Suarez is making ground is in what the raw facts of his performances mean for his team's results right now.

Fifty-nine goals in a season is an avalanche, and 17 in six games is stand-up-and-take-notice stuff. Additionally, by definition, a challenge doesn't have to be successful; a challenge involves one showing the desire or intent to compete on a certain level, whether or not they achieve it.

Behind you-know-who, Suarez might be closer to the level in question than anyone.

At Real Madrid, Gareth Bale is making his own case for such. At Atletico Madrid, Antoine Griezmann is, too, and Neymar is doing the same at Barcelona.

But are any of them making a greater impact on their team than Suarez?

There was a telling line from Enrique late last season, when he left the Uruguayan out of his side to face Getafe. Though Barcelona won 6-0 that day, the manager was still quizzed afterward on why the striker hadn't played. "He didn't play today because he's played 850,000 games," Enrique said.

There was a throwaway element to the line, but there was still something in it. It spoke of Suarez's resilience and relentless nature; of his habit for being at it all the time; of never yielding. It's where he has a point of difference in relation to others vying for the same status.

Suarez to date has been more durable than Bale and more consistent than Neymar. In comparison to Griezmann, he's done it more often—score and win.

Where he plays helps, sure, but he helps them, too. Since he's arrived, Barcelona have claimed eight of the 10 trophies they've contested, and his influence continues to grow. His first season brought 25 goals, last term brought 59 and now he's started the current one with a hat-trick, his fourth in six league games.

"I swear on my children's lives that I never look at the statistics," he told Jamie Carragher for the Daily Mail in February. But even if he doesn't, the rest of us do, and right now they're difficult to ignore.

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