In a little less than two years with Barcelona, Luis Suarez has won six trophies, silenced his critics with almost impeccable on-field behavior and now, most remarkably of all, left Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo in his shadow.
Suarez on Saturday fittingly scored a hat-trick as Barca retained their La Liga title with a 3-0 win at Granada to take his tally for the season to a remarkable 59, with 26 assists.
Of those 59, 40 came in La Liga, making him the first man to depose Messi and Ronaldo and win the Pichichi Trophy for Spain’s top scorer in seven years.
Moreover, it is the most prolific season anyone other than Messi and Ronaldo has produced in the history of the Spanish top flight.
The Pichichi and golden boot for Europe’s top goal scorer are individual awards where all that matters are the numbers and Suarez cannot be discredited.
He was sidelined as Neymar joined Messi and Ronaldo in FIFA’s top three at the Ballon d’Or to crown the world’s best player, despite playing a pivotal role in turning Barca from trophyless in 2013-2014 to treble winners a season later.
The controversy and stigma of having bitten an opponent three times in his career continues to cost the Uruguayan in the popularity stakes.
However, in his first full season without a prolonged suspension in three years, Suarez has shown his devastating potential to leave Ronaldo, Messi and Neymar trailing in his wake.
Barcelona’s title run was built once more around the thrilling talents of the South American “MSN” triumvirate.
Yet, of the three, Suarez was the most consistent. The team’s form replicated his in front of goal, he starred in the most glorious parts of the campaign and, most tellingly, made the difference when they most needed him.
When Messi was absent for two months due to knee ligament damage early in the season, Suarez scored 12 times in 10 games, including twice as Barca embarrassed Real Madrid 4-0 away from home.
Suarez also scored the winner as Barca beat Atletico Madrid 2-1 to open up a gap at the top in January and most memorably slotted home Messi’s pass from the penalty spot to complete a hat-trick in the 6-1 rout of RC Celta de Vigo in February.
“Suarez is a key man for us for his goal-scoring capability, but also for his hard work and character,” Barcelona boss Luis Enrique said recently.
That character shone through in the final weeks of the season as Suarez lifted Barca out of an alarming slump last month.
Suarez failed to find the net in any of Barca’s three consecutive La Liga defeats for the first time in 13 years last month.
Yet, he responded with 14 in the past five games for the five wins Barca needed to hold off a late-season surge by Real.
“If we don’t finish champions, I don’t care about the Pichichi,” he said earlier this week. “That’s what happened at Liverpool, we came close to winning the Premier League and finishing top scorer meant nothing to me, because we didn’t win the league.”
Two years on from the pain of missing out on the Premier League and being expelled from the World Cup for an infamous bite on Giorgio Chiellini, Suarez’s redemption story continues with another trophy to show why he forced through a move to Barca.
Moreover, he has the personal pride of leaving Ronaldo and Messi below him on the podium for the Pichichi they have made a personal duel over the past six years.
In other games, Athletic Bilbao defeated Sevilla 3-1, while Atletico Madrid beat Celta 2-0 and Real Madrid beat RC Deportivo de La Coruna 2-0.
Additional reporting by staff writer
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier