When coach and player first spoke on the phone, Simeone detected “the energy, the hunger, the challenge” that not only characterized Suárez, but were also Simeone’s best attributes as a player. Above all, however, Simeone felt that Suárez had something to prove. “He wanted to show that he is still relevant,” said the coach.
It is tempting to attribute the shape of Suárez in Madrid to the rekindling of that inner fire. After all, he always gave the impression that he is at his best when he has something or someone to be angry with, whether he is an opponent, an authority or, in this case, simply dying from the light. “Some did not believe that I was still capable of playing at a high level,” said Suárez this week.
And yet, it is also possible to believe that the opposite is true: that Suárez found himself not in war, but in peace.
His former team-mate Sebastián Abreu told the Spanish newspaper El País this week that he believed that Barcelona, in Suárez’s last year with the club, “set up a campaign in which he identified Luis as the problem of everything, together with Lionel Messi ”. Suárez, judging by his public comments, seems to agree with that assessment.
At Atlético, on the contrary, he found not only a coach who – as Abreu said – “knows perfectly how to treat a player”, but also found a club that does not “blame Suárez for all situations, and for that reason has released him to play football completely. ”Without struggles to fight off the field, he managed to dedicate himself once again to winning them.
As crucially, he found himself in a team prepared to offer him the support he needs to do so. Just as Atlético resurrected Suárez, he resurrected Atlético. Simeone always considered Suárez the best pure striker in the world, but he was aware that he was no longer capable of playing on the counterattack as devastatingly as, say, with Liverpool in their mid-20s.