Luis Suarez Living the Dream Two Years After Barcelona Debut

The dream came true. Although in classic Luis Suarez fashion, it was extremely complicated.

"Lots of players say that about lots of clubs: 'This is the moment I've dreamed about'. But with Barcelona it was difficult not to feel that way," explained the striker in his autobiography, Crossing the Line.

"There is a video of me as a young kid being interviewed for Uruguayan television, saying exactly that: 'I want to play for Barcelona one day'."

But a little Luis Suarez would probably not have imagined he would be forced to wait two months to make his debut because he had been banned from playing football for biting another person.

His assault on Italy's Giorgio Chiellini was punished by a global ban from football, which even prevented him from being officially presented after he signed.

That also kept him from training with his team-mates for the first few weeks after he joined the Catalan giants.

“The FIFA sanction is shameful. They have no sensitivity towards the fans. They might as well handcuff him and throw him in Guantanamo,” said Diego Maradona on his TV show De Zurda (h/t the Guardian).

Barcelona manager Luis Enrique used the same prison camp analogy when the striker was finally allowed to link up with his team-mates, as he explained in his book. Suarez wrote:

"

It wasn't the most orthodox of presentations to the rest of the squad either, the day I was finally allowed to train with the team.

Barcelona's manager Luis Enrique gathered in the players and told them: "Well, they have finally got him out of Guantanamo to be here with us today for training..."

Everyone applauded the released prisoner, and I did my best not to look too embarrassed about being the centre of attention.

"

Suarez eventually made his debut on 25 October 2014 and, similarly in his style, it wasn't a home game against a lesser club, it was a blockbuster clash with Real Madrid at the Santiago Bernabeu.

Francisco Seco/Associated Press

It started in perfect fashion, with the forward teeing up Neymar to open the scoring, but Barcelona did not play well and ultimately lost 3-1, with Suarez subbed off after 69 minutes.

“I’m happy to be back playing. It’s a big relief and I’m happy the time has passed,” Suarez said, per Sid Lowe of the Guardian. “It’s a bittersweet feeling because of the result."

This was just the beginning of a difficult spell for Suarez. Many questioned whether Barcelona were right to buy him and mocked the idea of him working well with Lionel Messi and Neymar up front.

Too many big egos mused talking heads, who thought the MSN combination couldn’t possibly gel and that he wasn’t worth the £75 million fee paid to Liverpool.

For weeks, it seemed like they were right. Suarez played on the right wing, Neymar on the left, with Messi as a false nine.

But it wasn’t working. The Uruguayan is an authentic killer in the box, a real No. 9, and Messi saw that. His decision to encourage his team-mate to play in the centre while the Argentine started on the right—which initially happened midway through a Champions League clash with Ajax on 5 November 2014—was the key to the start of the MSN’s fruition as one of the most impressive attacking units ever to exist.

Emilio Morenatti/Associated Press

"One day I was playing up front and I said to Leo, 'let's change position', but Messi told me to stay as a No. 9, and the coach started to put me there for games," explained Suarez, per Josep Capdevila of Sport.

And by the time the second Clasico of the season came around, Suarez—now scoring goals left, right and centre—was ready to pay Barcelona fans back in full for their support.

Barcelona won 2-1 and he won the free-kick for the first goal, which was nodded home by Jeremy Mathieu, before brilliantly converting the second himself.

He glided away from Sergio Ramos and Pepe to reach Dani Alves’ looped ball forward, taking the perfect touch to get it under his control, before lethally lashing it across Iker Casillas and into the far corner.

That was his first truly massive moment as a Barcelona player, and there have been plenty of others since.

Many have argued that Suarez’s arrival earned Barcelona the treble for the first time since Pep Guardiola did it in 2009. They went on to win the UEFA Super Cup and the Club World Cup, before following that up with the league and cup double last season, along with a Spanish Super Cup.

Arguably the biggest goal of his career came in the Champions League final against Juventus, with the score balanced at 1-1, when he nipped in to fire past Gianluigi Buffon and send Barcelona ahead. They won 3-1 in Berlin and won their fifth European Cup.

Michael Probst/Associated Press

Suarez is calmer now. Much of the stress of his years in Holland and England is gone. The forward is no longer fighting to make it to the top. Now he is there, with his family, in a place he loves.

In Wright Thompson’s wonderful exploration of Suarez’s murky past on ESPN (contains explicit language), he reaches the conclusion that when Suarez bites, it is a reflexive reaction to fear.

A defence mechanism to stop his wife and children being taken away from him, because football for him became more than a sport. It became his route to seeing the girl he loved again—Sofia, now his wife.

She and their two children were with him last week, as he collected the European Golden Shoe for his goalscoring feats last season before the family invited the rest of the squad and their partners to dinner.

Manu Fernandez/Associated Press

It was partly to celebrate Suarez’s accomplishment but mainly to thank them for their contribution, which earned the forward so many chances to dispatch.

That’s not to say there haven’t been incidents involving Suarez that have drawn attention. Against Atletico Madrid in the Champions League quarter-final first leg last season, he was lucky not to see red when he kicked out at Juanfran and accosted Filipe Luis.

But his behaviour has conformed to general standards accepted both in football and in general. There has been no biting, no accusations of racism. He has the respect of his team-mates and of Spanish football.

That much was demonstrated by the award for best foreign player in La Liga which he earned on Monday night at the league’s gala event in Valencia, voted for by the captains of the 20 clubs.

Suarez says that he will never win the Ballon d’Or firstly because of his profile and then because of Messi, per Sport, but he is on the 30-man shortlist. It wouldn't be a surprise to see him make the podium this year. The dream goes on.

Rik Sharma is Bleacher Report's lead Barcelona correspondent. All information and quotes obtained firsthand unless specified. Follow him on Twitter here: @riksharma_.