I've matured: Suarez
Uruguay striker Luis Suarez says he has 'matured' ahead of the 2018 World Cup, having caused a string of controversies in his previous tournaments.
In 2010, Suarez deliberately handled the ball on the line to deny Ghana a winner against Uruguay in the quarterfinal, before excessively celebrating after the African side missed the resulting penalty.
Four years later in Brazil, he received a four-month suspension and a nine-game international ban for biting Giorgio Chiellini in a group game against Italy in what was astonishingly his third time biting an opponent during a match.
Now Suarez is ready for a third World Cup, but the 31-year-old says he has outgrown his past misdemeanours -- although he promised that his confrontational style of play would not be softened.
"Any player dreams of playing in and winning a World Cup," Suarez told a press conference. "Now South Africa 2010 and Brazil 2014 are in the past. I arrive with other expectations, other players and other sensations that motivate you to go far in the World Cup. The games are very demanding and I have matured a lot.
"Despite changing in some aspects, my way of playing will be exactly the same because that's how I live football and how I'm like."
Suarez was also reluctant to speculate on Uruguay's chances of winning a first World Cup since 1950, instead focusing on getting out of Group A, featuring Egypt, Saudi Arabia and hosts Russia.
"The candidates are always the same: Brazil, Germany, Spain, Argentina, France. There are others like Belgium, which is the second World Cup for the same generation," he said.
“For Uruguay, it is easy to say that we will go to win the World Cup, the difficult thing is to do it. So we better go with the typical sentence of going match by match. First, we have to pass the group stage."
Comments