Luis Suarez is always planning a Nacional comeback, but that doesn’t make coming home any less bizarre

Some time ago, on a brick wall outside Parque Central, someone painted the Nacional crest and wrote a message in the club’s red, white and blue. It’s not a particularly polished attempt, the letters are unevenly sized, hastily drawn and the badge is jerky, the whole thing is pretty rough, but somehow it’s better for it. And there’s something about the message, something meaningful in its simplicity. “I will always come back to see you,” it wrote.

Y volvió pic.twitter.com/GSIt8GKBjb

– Sid Lowe (@sidlowe) August 1, 2022

This week, Luis Suarez do.

Sixteen years after he passed away as a heartbroken teenager, desperate to follow his girlfriend across the Atlantic even when Groningen wasn’t exactly Barcelona, Suarez has rejoined the club where his career started. He was 14 when he first walked in, 18 when he walked out. Now he is 35 years old.

As he arrived at Parque Central to attend his presentation, a biplane flew past a banner that read “Suarez to Nacional” – the message began as a request, one of the ideas Crazy that no one really thought would happen, now a reality. The video was recorded by Sofi, the girlfriend he ran away from and the wife he returned to.

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Delfi, Benja and Lauti, their kids, were with them and many others, the impact was huge. This kind of thing doesn’t really happen anymore. About 20,000 tickets were sold to welcome back the boy who debuted them in May 2005 and left the following summer with the league championship. Suarez was given the number 9 shirt by Emmanuel Gigliotti, who said it was an “honour” to give it up. Got a message from Lionel Messi: “I know what it means to come home,” he laughs. A video was played with footage of Suarez from years ago at Nacional and beyond, accompanied by music by the Montevideo band No Te Va A Gustar. “Go home when you want,” it ran.

“I’m here for you and because I want to,” Suarez told fans in the stands. “My wonderful kids dreamed of me playing for Nacional.”

Anyway, he has. And of course that’s the point of this week, or at least part of it. Suarez left Salto when he was seven, his family moved to Montevideo and lived in the La Comercial neighborhood. He didn’t know it, until years later when a man walking his dog stopped to chat with his brother completely by chance and didn’t even know who it was, but Obdulio Varela lived. right across the street – arguably the two most important people. player in the history of Uruguay in less than 50 meters. His mother worked as a cleaner at the bus station; His father, with whom she broke up, worked where he could.

Just behind the house was a narrow, rough gravel road where they played. People call it callejon – “alley.” One end is a lemon tree and the other end is a women’s prison. Next to it is a house for children, enclosed in a barbed wire fence. It’s not always a great place to be, especially after dark, but it is a Great place to be. Along the way were workshops, metal shutters pulled down to provide targets. Or other painted posts did the trick. There, Suarez slammed into everyone, chest tightness – just like now. When he joined local club Urreta, it was no less fierce.

Suarez’s brother Paolo, six years his senior, played – he would build a successful career in Colombia, El Salvador and Guatemala as well as Uruguay. So does his younger brother Maxi. In fact, Luis insists that even though he’s not as successful, Maxi is the better ball player. Luis wants to play for Nacional, the team he supports.

He will attend their matches, although he will also have to attend Penarol’s matches as it is Maxi’s team – the family is almost split exactly in the middle when it comes to great rival Uruguay. – and his mother insisted that they go together. Even if that means watching the team “wrong” a number of weeks, even though they hurt each other. Suarez recalls being confronted by a Penarol fan in the stands during a match who wanted to know why he didn’t celebrate the goal. Under his trousers, he wears Nacional socks, an act of rebellion.

Eventually, both men joined the youth system at Nacional. Suarez may not have been there long. By his own admission, he wasn’t always the most dedicated, but Wilson Pires, who works at the club and to whom Suarez often begs for bus money to go see Sofi, helped guide the way. lead him. Also warn him. So is Paolo. And so is Sofi, a salvation, his everything. Even more than he expected.

When she was forced to leave with her family, everything changed: Suarez was desperate to achieve it, and to achieve it. over there. As fast as you can, too. Her family went to Barcelona; It took him 10 years to get there, but Europe has called.

Same goes home. He is a Bolso. He followed Nacional, followed them. Agree with them. He supported them, grew up with them, played for them. There is a beautiful picture in which the Panamanian striker “El Pistolero” — original Pistolero – Jose Luis Garces is jubilantly marching around the field, and the kid he’s riding on is Suarez.

pic.twitter.com/WxfYuP55YB

– Sid Lowe (@sidlowe) July 27, 2022

He is one of them.

That’s why the reaction to his return home was huge, but it’s not the only reason. It’s also because he become very big, their man is doing it there, someone to watch, to celebrate, to claim as their own. When he first joined the Nacional team, he missed a lot of opportunities and was abused a lot. They called him a wooden-legged donkey, but he went on to become hugely successful: Groningen, Ajax Amsterdam, Liverpool, Barcelona, Atlético Madrid, National team. He has scored 520 professional goals. His are ridiculous numbers; he is a silly football player.

However, sometimes it can still feel like he has a little bit BelowHave evaluated. That doesn’t mean he Not judged – he was – and had good reasons to protest; Everyone knows it, he’s above all else. But sometimes it’s remarkable that sometimes things aren’t made up of what he did, the player he used to be. Outside of Uruguay, anyway. And, actually this is a question: is it possible outside of Atletico, where a short break has made a big impact?

He won five LaLiga title for seven years in Spain. He almost won Premier League with Liverpool, and no, it’s not a single hand, but ask the Anfield fans what they think and they’ll tell you it’s not too broad, that they haven’t really seen anything yet. exactly like that. He has won the European Golden Shoe twice, with two very different teams. He is the only player to become Spain’s top scorer, besides Messi and Cristiano RonaldoIn 11 year – goes back to Diego Forlan, fellow Uruguayan.

In 2015-16, he scored 40 goals. Only Messi and Ronaldo have ever scored more; No one has matched it since. Only two people have ever scored more goals for Barcelona. He scored more than 20 league goals every season for four years and then had one terrible the year he scored 16. He didn’t score less than 20 goals per season in all competitions for nine years. And have you ever seen anyone pass the ball like him? Ending in Barcelona came with a brief phone call, only 30 seconds; if the time was right, the way it was not, this motivated him.

He went to Atletico. They say; On the last day of his first season, he sat there in tears, talking to his family on the phone, scoring the winning goal that helped them win the league. The goal, many. There were 21 of them that year. Even last year, when they decided he couldn’t go on, as he watched from the side, there were a lot of other people. Show him some posts, callejon or Camp Nou, and he’ll get the ball between them. As he left, there were tears, applause, recognition at the Metropolitano: a banner asking him to thank him for “making us champions.”

At 35, with his knees still as they are, maybe it’s time. But there is a World Cup coming, something to look forward to, one last shot after 15 years and 68 goals for the national team. There is also pride. The initial tendency to stay in Europe, proves a point. But then another idea began to emerge, to take shape. What if? At Parque Central, they accepted it, campaign for it. It’s been good for them economically as well as emotionally: 4,000 new subscribers to Nacional TV, 5,000 shirts gone, that first day alone. Turns out he hugged it too.

There are good and real reasons for that, both professionally and personally. There are possibilities and even talks – Seville, Borussia Dortmund, River Plate, clubs in Mexico, Brazil and Turkey – it didn’t happen. Agreements are not always reached economically or contractually. Some offers, like a few from Turkey, raise issues of volatility. Brazil brings long time on the road. The US season is already underway. Summer is passing, nothing has been decided yet, the right time for Nacional.

A six-month contract, trophies to challenge in short time, a World Cup to prepare, right there without having to fly a long way back for each encounter: it’s a compelling proposition . So is the house; warmth, feeling, being wanted. Family. Forget money, let’s do this. It didn’t seem entirely believable at first, but then it happened. And then it still doesn’t feel entirely believable, judging by the reactions of supporters, the size of it all. That’s what makes the presentation feel special, almost unbelievable, while also making it feel somehow pre-arranged. Like this return home will always happen, the circle closes.

As the video plays clips of him from all those years ago, Suarez stands on a stage in the middle of Parque Central and watches the screen. In one video, Delfi, almost the same age he joined the club, said: “Hey, Dad, I’m so glad you’re here where you want to be, where it all started when I was very young.” In another, he appeared, still a child, and said, “Time will return.” And then there’s a clip of him at Melwood, Liverpool’s training ground. Now bigger. “I want to return to Nacional one day,” he said.

Now that he is here again, that day has come.