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Every good story needs a villain.
If there has been one disappointment in
this thrilling season – an early exit from both the Champions League and the FA
Cup don’t count as disappointments; consider them a cosmic tax on all the good
things that have happened – it is the lack of a good counterpoint, someone
malevolent and conspiring, someone skilled enough, someone determined enough to
threaten all of our hopes and dreams.
Harry Potter must have his Voldemort, Luke Skywalker his Darth Vader,
Milton’s Adam and Eve must be hounded by Lucifer’s Rebel Angels. No bad guy to vanquish, and the narrative arc
is ruined: you may have success, but you’ll never know Victory.
Which is why I love Luis Suarez.
All of our old nemeses have gone, at least
for this season. Admit it: it’s not
nearly as much fun taking pleasure in United settling into the soft brown ooze
of mid-table ignominy with their current brain trust manning the ship, as it
would have been had Sir Alex been at the helm.
For years David Moyes roamed the sidelines for Everton, square jawed and
steely eyed, and we assumed he was filled with Grit and Indomitable
Spirit. Eight months in at Old Trafford,
and that same expression fairly screams, “Did I leave the iron on at home? I think I left the iron on!” His guilty, stooped shouldered sulk into the
stands during City’s most recent evisceration of the Red Devils, a lap dog
who’d just done a Bad Thing on the living room carpet, brought no joy, no
visceral sense of triumph, to City supporters. Afterward, he actually expressed admiration for City’s style on the pitch! There was no defiance, no rancor, no “noisy
neighbors”dismissiveness to stir our outrage. Overawed and submissive, he might as well have been managing Torquay
United.
It’s a far cry from May 2012, when Dzeko
and Aguero and the boys were fashioning a miracle, and, split screen, we were watching
Fergie, all manic gum chewing and burst capillaries, wandering
disbelieving in Sunderland’s Stadium of Light, doing an impromptu one man
version of “Downfall”. It was a glorious
moment, a deeply satisfying moment, heroes accomplishing the improbable on one
side of our television screens, the source of all of our misery and woe set to
stew in humiliation on the other. Every
good story needs a villain.
Fergie’s gone, replaced by a grocery
clerk. José Mourinho for a
moment looked like a worthy adversarial successor. He was dismissive and outrageous, and his
team of plucky ponies seemed a serious threat.
But like Chelsea itself, The Special One is a mere pretender, a
caricature, not a real threat. With his
Arafat beard and his open collar shirts under Armani suits and his penchant for
talking crazy talk, Mourinho looks increasingly like the second runner-up in a
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad lookalike contest. His Mussolini pout doesn’t help.
That leaves Liverpool. (The other “top clubs” are nothing much:
Wenger, like his club, just seems tired, and really was never the kind of
manager to stir more than quiet respect in his opponents. Poor Spurs, twirling in Bedlam, have pinned
their hopes and dreams to the back of one Emmanuel Adebayor, which from most
City supporters can only elicit a mixture of commiseration and pity. Everton is soaring high on goofus dust and
positive feelings; there’s nothing dark and villainous rising from Goodison
Park).
Brendan Rodgers, Boy Wonder, is all
Earnestness and Sincerity. Rooting
against him is like loudly expressing your hatred of the color beige. Steven Gerrard is, literally, an altar boy:
Sure, he may sneak the odd sip from the sacramental wine and get into the
occasional scrap, but he’s a decent enough lad. Between them, they generate as much passion in their opponents’
supporters as a large bowl of mashed potatoes.
Every good story needs a villain. Finally, at the end of this long season,
Fate’s tumblers have turned and everything is in place. The poseurs, the pretenders, the Unreadys,
are a low background rumble. It is
Liverpool and City, Sky Blue against Scarlet, our heroes massed against the
last obstacle to Victory. It is Us
versus Luis Suarez.
Ah, Luis Suarez! El Gran Mordedor. Lemur eyed Suarez, with his Peter Lorre
shiftiness and his uncanny knack for scoring goals. Conniving Suarez, the man who shamelessly put
forth “El Mano del Diablo” in the 2010 World Cup, effectively eliminating
loveable underdogs Ghana from the competition, utterly graceless in victory,
cackling in triumph as Asamoah Gyan’s penalty deflected off the crossbar. Bigot Suarez, whose benighted view of race
relations (“I don’t speak to Black people”) makes one wonder if UKIP has opened
an office in Montevideo. Suarez,
talented, scheming, contemptible Suarez, a villain worthy of Milton, or at
least Rowling. This is our new
Fergie. This is the man we need to
vanquish.
I just hope he doesn’t take a bite out of
David Silva when we do.
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