Luis Suarez bite lampooned by Italian adverts: 'Everyone wants to eat Italian'

Welcome home!' - a Suarez-inspired ad by Barilla

Italian companies were quick to cash in on Luis Suarez’s biting of Giorgio Chiellini during Uruguay’s World Cup win over Italy, coming up with a series of amusing advertisements, reports The Telegraph.

A day after the Liverpool player was thrown out of the World Cup and given a four-month ban, Suarez’s now-notorious assault on the Italian defender was gleefully lampooned by Italian firms.

Eataly, a food emporium with outlets both in Italy and abroad, placed a full page advertisement in Friday’s newspapers featuring a New York Post story about the Suarez biting incident which had used the headline “Eataly!”

“Everyone wants to eat Italian,” the company boasted, above a photograph of Chiellini pulling down his shirt to show where he had been bitten on the shoulder.

Barilla, one of the country’s biggest pasta companies, came up with a simple but effective ad showing 11 pieces of tubular pasta – representing the national team’s 11 players – and the words “Welcome home” (“Bentornati a casa”). One of the pasta tubes had a chunk chomped out of it.

A second Barilla advertisement showed a colander of freshly boiled pasta and the words “They cooked us in 90 minutes”.

Everyone wants to eat Italian!' Eataly Ad that was on Friday's Corriere Della Sera

Suarez, who returned to a hero’s welcome in Uruguay despite having been banned for nine games by Fifa, has been variously portrayed on social media as Dracula, Hannibal Lecter and Jaws.

The 27-year-old star striker has not publicly spoken since Fifa ruled on Thursday that he cannot play in Uruguay’s next nine competitive matches and suspended him from all soccer-related activity for four months.

The ban has sparked fury in his homeland and even Chiellini, whose shoulder Suarez sank his teeth into, came out on Friday and said he felt no anger towards the Uruguayan. He said the punishment handed down by Fifa was “excessive”.

The punishment ended Suarez’s involvement in the World Cup, with Uruguay due to face Colombia on Saturday.

The ban is the longest ever imposed at a World Cup.