Another remarkable article by our favourite write, Martin Samuel: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/ar...Footballer-The-Year-Award--Martin-Samuel.html Suarez is poetry in motion... but can he really be Player of the Year? And the days are not full enough And the nights are not full enough And life slips by like a field mouse. Not shaking the grass. Ezra Pound wrote that. Remarkable, isn't it? 'Pound is more responsible for the 20th century revolution in poetry than any other individual,' said TS Eliot, and he would know. So here's one of his lesser known works. 'You let in the Jew and the Jew rotted your empire, and you yourselves out-jewed the Jew. And the big Jew has rotted every nation he has wormed into.' Pound said that in a pro-fascist radio broadcast in March 1942. He said plenty of other stuff, too, and was arrested for treason after the war. Later, Pound renounced his anti-Semitism in public, but recollections of the private individual tell a different story. He would refer to people he disliked as Jews, and refuse to talk to psychiatrists with Jewish names. He really wasn't a nice guy. Doesn't make Eliot wrong, though. Doesn't make the depth of emotional meaning conveyed in the sparse four lines of And the days are not full enough - that's the whole poem up there, by the way - any less astonishing. Same with Philip Larkin. 'I can hear fat Caribbean germs pattering after me in the Underground,' he wrote, disgusted, to Kingsley Amis on a visit to London. Then again, Larkin was disgusted by a lot of things; by himself, often enough. For Larkin in excelsis, however, read An Arundel Tomb. 'What will survive of us is love.' We could go on. Through Chuck Berry to Miles Davis or Michael Jackson. We separate the man from his art. But not in football. In football, we want it all. Beauty and the blameless life. We can accept that poets, artists, musicians or writers can be despicable creatures redeemed by their work, but from our footballers we demand the exalted physicality of an athlete and the immaculate morality of angel. So could Luis Suarez be the Footballer of the Year this season? Of course not. Should Luis Suarez be the Footballer of the Year this season? Well, who else have you got? This is a crude calculation as it presumes no other player could have scored Suarez's goals, but the difference he has made to Liverpool this season equates to seven league points and, potentially, a place in the Europa League. Goals from Suarez have changed Liverpool's dividend on seven occasions. He has been the difference between victory and a draw with Norwich City and a draw and a defeat against Manchester City, Sunderland, Everton, Newcastle United and Chelsea. Without his goal at Anfield, the Europa League qualifier with Hearts would have gone into extra time. And in this season's Premier League, seven points is currently separating Liverpool and a place in the bottom three. True, if Suarez had not been in the team, somebody else would have been and that somebody might have scored, too. So this isn't exact science. Nobody can accurately evaluate Suarez's worth to Liverpool this season but, ball-park, seven points sounds about right. Maybe more. Is there any footballer in the country more influential? Last week, Jamie Carragher compared Suarez to Lionel Messi at Barcelona and Cristiano Ronaldo at Real Madrid. Indeed, he placed him higher, because Suarez is not playing in a great team. But Footballer of the Year? No chance. This is bogeyman Suarez, remember, verbal debaser of Patrice Evra, alleged diver, alleged stamper, the man English football loves to hate and boo, even during the feelgood Olympic Games this summer when just completing the course got a standing ovation. How can he sway a vote of journalists, some of whom believe their award winner must stand out as a role model, as much as a footballer? How could he earn the votes of players, some of whom are black, ethically-minded or represent Manchester United? Could you vote for him? No. Could I? It would be very, very hard. A vote for Suarez would appear to send out the message that racism doesn't matter. Yet I'd have no hesitation in referring to Larkin as our greatest modern poet; no agonising over love for the music of the wife-beating Ike Turner either. Maybe by the end of the season the Suarez dilemma will no longer exist. Different players go through purple patches at various times - Juan Mata was brilliant for Chelsea as Roberto Di Matteo's side topped the table early on - but few have been as consistent as Suarez, with no sign of relenting. Left to fend for himself by an almost wantonly negligent series of executive choices in the transfer market, he has prevented Liverpool entering freefall. And he is not even a conventional striker. If Liverpool had acted with coherence this summer, Suarez would be playing beside a prolific goalscorer, setting up as many as he scores, the burden on his shoulders relieved. For Uruguay, he most regularly played alongside Diego Forlan or Sebastian Abreu. These days Edinson Cavani is his regular foil. The idea of him leading a line unaccompanied would baffle his national coach, Oscar Tabarez. What he is doing at Liverpool is far removed from his comfort zone. And yet he is this season's peak performer: top scorer in the Premier League with two more goals than Robin van Persie and top scorer of any Premier League player in all club competitions, again two more than Van Persie. The difference is, Van Persie has Wayne Rooney, Danny Welbeck and Javier Hernandez to take a load off, Suarez is in virtual isolation. Carragher also placed Suarez alongside Robbie Fowler, Michael Owen and Fernando Torres among recent goalscorers at Liverpool, but in essence he is more like Steven Gerrard or Carragher himself, in his ability to influence matches sometimes with sheer will. Yet, imagine if he was the Footballer of the Year. There would be uproar, protests, arguments, quite probably resignations. A breakaway black union without doubt, if he won the PFA vote, a very awkward few weeks for representatives of the media if he topped any poll of journalists. An unrepentant horror as an example to the next generation, it would be fiendishly hard to justify his glorification, almost inexcusable. Yet is he the best player in the league? This minute, by a mile. Those crowned Footballer of the Year tend to be winners. It seemed incongruous two years ago when Scott Parker collected the prize in a season that ended in relegation for his club, West Ham United. The case for Suarez would be different. It would be based on his contribution to a former member of the elite, Liverpool, and how far a great club might have tumbled without him. There was certainly a similar case for Chris Waddle at Tottenham Hotspur one season, when the club could easily have slipped into the bottom three without his frequent interventions. Yet Suarez won't win and can't win, we know that. He has been associated with too much of football's dark side - racism, simulation - to rise above the negativity. He refused to shake hands with Evra, at first, even though the wronged man made the first move, he openly mocked David Moyes when the Everton manager dared to suggest he went to ground too easily. And yet despite the opprobrium, Suarez stays strong. If no-one likes him, see if he cares. Perhaps this is why, as well as being this season's best footballer he is also one that troubles the soul. Suarez does not do sorry, he does not do contrition and, in this, demands to be considered only for his art. Will he care if recognition is not his at the end of the season? Probably not. As Pound said on his release from a lengthy stint of hard labour: 'I've had it worse.'
Is this meant to be an ironic comment on the arrogance, hypocricy and lack of intergrity in football journalism?
At least he has had to accept how good Suarez is The rest just a careful construction to try and make you believe its a work of great thought and reflection to almost lure us into thinking its an accurate and impartial piece, when in fact its written by a bigoted oaf with a paper thin ability to understand psychology and "what makes the man". Also can't help thinking he is once again trying to reinforce the contrived disposition the media have painted of Suarez for a while and is coming back to bite them as people look a little deeper.
All he's saying is that famous people have been rewarded for their public work, regardless of their private personalities, and that Suarez should be too- but he won't be. The argument's flawed in a number of ways, imo, but still interesting. Far too soon to be thinking of Suarez as Player of the Year, too.
I know that, It's just that adding this poetic piece at the start of a football article just doesn't sit right with me it sticks of pretentiousness. Not really. ****in' hilarious. And then he just launches into a football article. Really crazy stuff imo, perhaps some like it I suppose.
Not from fat arse, who tried to justify Evra's proven lie about how he couldn't repeat the word '******' after he'd appeared on YouTube doing just that with some limp analogy from Chris Rock, which completely missed the point. All goes to prove that EVERYTHING these ****ing parasites of the game in the print media write is politically motivated popullism, with utterly no basis in hard facts and performance whatsoever. The whole, overpaid, drunken, backhand-taking shower of them, from Lawton to Holt, from Samuel to Barnes, from Ladyboy to Winter, were willing chearleaders for the FA's witchhunt when they needed a head-on-a-stick because they couldn't touch Terry. Look at the same arseholes now piously defending Clattenburg on the basis of the lack of evidence against him, yet half of Suarez's ban, four games, was based totally upon the word of Evra claiming that he was repeatedly called 'blackie' (after changing his mind twice what he was called) in a crowded goalmouth that no-one else heard. That and the fact that Suarez couldn't adaquately translate the meaning of the word 'concilitory'. Yet Clattenburg is obviously not some greasy dago who barely speaks English, so he deserves the benefit of an assumption of innocence that should be offered to anyone accused of an offence. And as you brought up the subject of wife-beating and assaulting women Martin, did that ever stop you voting for Giggs? No, you based that upon the man's undoubted brilliant career and contribution to the game? Ever put Rio in an all star prem league XI despite the fact he missed a drugs test and assaulted a female steward? Evra ever make your Prem XI despite even though he was admonished for his evidence by an FA panel when he stood by and allowed United officials (who weren't even there) to label a Chelsea groundsman as a racist even though he knew damn well it was completely false? You don't have to quote Pound and Larkin to highlight hypocrisy Martin, just look in the mirror.
Is it just me who thinks this article is pretty spot on? All he's saying is that Suarez will not be granted the title of player of the year despite the fact there's a good chance he should be a serious contender by the end of the season. He's making comparisons to other talented people who have been rewarded for their talents despite their questionable personal beliefs or actions. If anything he's supporting Suarez, he's saying he should be rewarded for his efforts on the pitch as opposed to being overlooked due to a few misdemeanours. People should read it properly before discarding it as trash like many of the other newspaper articles written about Suarez.
