There was such an explosion of sound and fury over the way Antoine Griezmann chose to announce that he was staying at Atletico Madrid, via a video production company owned by Gerard Pique, that many have failed to properly consider what was behind Barcelona’s willingness to spend €100 million (plus another €60 million in wages) on him.
The answer, increasingly evidently, is that Luis Suarez is in that horrible antechamber that leads from excellence to decline. There were moments last season when a neutral observer, looking at the Uruguayan’s performance, commitment, football brains, assists and goals, must have thought that Barca’s lashing out nine figures on the Frenchman meant that either they had money to burn or this was a footballing version of “Brewster’s Millions.”
Suarez, without fear of contradiction, is extraordinary. Gifted with beautiful skills, that’s the velvet. But at his essence, he’s driven by the ruthless, steely determination of the eternal street footballer who starts with nothing. That’s the iron fist.
Best of all, it’s arguable that no footballer throughout Lionel Messi’s prodigious career has ever partnered him better. The two South Americans share family time, travel time to the stadium and a sense of humour, and on the pitch, they often appear to share one vast footballing brain. Whichever one of them thinks a brilliant thought, the other is usually either a millionth of a second ahead of his partner or able to react so quickly that it’s as if they shared the initial spark of brilliance.
Sadly, however, there’s another element, one that explains why Barcelona wanted to add Griezmann to a squad that were already La Liga and Copa del Rey winners.
Last season, the normally prolific centre-forward had scored three times in 15 competitive matches by deep into November. The SOS signals were loud and clear. Worse, Suarez’s touch, his timing and his sharpness all looked like they’d deserted him. He was frustrated, confused and hard to watch.
Barca’s No. 9 admitted it all too. He told Mundo Deportivo: “I’m very self-critical, even if I’m baffled why the ball ‘doesn’t want to go in.’ I have to correct things that I do wrong and keep training to improve until I start scoring.
“Often I’m hard on myself for not doing things well. Not just when not scoring goals, I hate doing things which damage the team — like losing possession of the ball in a way I’d never normally do. When that happens, it’s what worries me the most.
“Also when I make bad decisions, the kind of mistake that when you’re confident, you don’t make.”