Skip to main content

It's almost exactly six months since 2014's great 'Where were you when it happened?' sports moment.

I was in a little Rio joint called Jobi, the only local dive we could find that served something besides variations on 'slab of meat in sauce.' They were showing a dreary World Cup game – Italy vs. Uruguay.

It was mid-afternoon and hot. The place was packed. Everyone had had a couple of beers. The atmosphere was sleepy. Then, in the 79th minute, Luis Suarez bit Giorgio Chiellini.

It happened fast. We were sitting at the back. The heads between our seats and the screen began to perk up. A unified thought ran through the bar's hive mind: "No, he didn't. Not again."

They showed the slo-mo replay. He'd done it again. The announcers commenced to shrieking. The place went berserk, men jumping up and down delightedly (okay, maybe that was just me). This lunatic had done it again! I can't remember sports making me quite so happy.

There is something unimpeachably pure about Suarez's febrile viciousness. Out on the field, he is as predictable as a jackal, and just as much a slave to his nature. He's bitten three people (that we know of). He'll surely bite more. That sort of self-destructive consistency is a rare and salutary trait.

In the aftermath, people rushed to paint him a bigger villain than Pol Pot. That was also consistent with our nature as an audience – hysterical and ridiculous.

The exaggerated revulsion persuaded Liverpool to sell Suarez – at that moment, arguably the best player in the world.

That decision was resonating like a gong on Sunday morning as I watched a much more entertaining match – Liverpool vs. Arsenal.

It ended in a 2-2 draw. Liverpool scored a late equalizer, and may end up convinced it was a good thing. It's just going to make what has to come next harder.

Last May, when it still had Suarez, Liverpool was one game from winning the Premiership. The current season isn't yet half over, and Liverpool is already finished. It sits in 10th place. The squad is in chaos. The manager will be fired shortly.

All of this – every bit of it – can be traced back to the decision to allow Suarez to leave for Barcelona.

As soon as Liverpool did it, it was the worst choice of the year by any team, anywhere. It has since snowballed into one of the stupidest calls in sports history.

There are two aggravating factors – it's now clear Liverpool had no idea what came next; and was tricked into doing it by the player. I'm convinced Suarez planned this long before the World Cup. He'd already tried to leave Liverpool once. He'd alternately been bullied and flattered into staying.

So instead, he took the bad boyfriend route – convincing the unloved partner that breaking up was all her idea. And he knew exactly what would drive them round the bend – he'd done it before.

It's in the nature of football to make terrible mistakes when buying and selling players. It's exceedingly difficult to extrapolate a player's quality in one league or team or system to any other.

Suarez is a case in point – he spent years tearing up the Dutch first division. His name turned round the rumour mill with dizzying constancy. Everyone but Liverpool took a look, and then took a pass.

If your scouts can't spot the quality in a mature player who will one day be considered the best striker alive, how exactly are we defining 'expertise'?

What no one will ever say out loud is that most of them do what the rest of us do when evaluating talent – guess. The difference is they're better salesmen.

Having lucked into Suarez, Liverpool became convinced it could replicate the formula. The team is owned by Boston Red Sox principal John Henry. He put in a four-man transfer committee to oversee moves – because everyone with a few bucks in the bank wants to recreate NORAD headquarters in their basement.

This was all supposed to be a metric marvel, including contributions from a 'head of performance analysis' and an evaluative computer model designed by a theoretical physicist. It's been an unmitigated disaster.

In two years, Liverpool has misspent more than $350-million. It has brought in two dozen players, only two of whom (Daniel Sturridge and Philippe Coutinho) have made any impact.

This is a fundamental problem with today's sports teams. It's a proportionally bigger problem for bigger clubs.

Team ownership throws off huge amounts of money. Lots of money leads to lots of hiring, because everyone wants to see their business is thriving. Thriving equals growing. The roster can't increase in numbers, so the support staff does instead.

Suddenly, there are all kinds of people running around doing all sorts of impressive sounding things – measuring and evaluating and innovating and God knows what else. It is in every one of their interests that their jobs sound essential. None of them are. The only essential employees of any club are out on the field.

All these extraneous staffers are mostly harmless until they start thinking too hard. Which they inevitably do. Nobody wants to propose the obvious solution – where's the expertise in that? So they come up with a complicated solution, which is much less likely to work. Occam's razor.

This is how a vastly resourced and apparently sane sports club convinces itself that it's a good idea to get rid of a once-in-a-generation player like Luis Suarez.

Here's a new rule that Liverpool might want to create an action committee to consider and advise on: If you have the best player in the world, you do anything you can to keep him, regardless of how many people he's bitten.

Follow related authors and topics

Authors and topics you follow will be added to your personal news feed in Following.

Interact with The Globe