‘An impossible dream’ – how Suarez became one of Europe’s best

It was an emotional day for Uruguayan football on Tuesday.

After a career with his country that spanned 17 years, 69 goals and 142 appearances, Luiz Suarez has announced his international retirement.

The former Liverpool and Barcelona forward, who is still playing for Inter Miami in Major League Soccer in America, will go down in history as one of Uruguay’s greatest ever – helping them to a Copa America triumph in 2011.

No-one needs much reminding about his stellar career, having won six top-flight titles, a Champions League trophy and four Copa del Reys during his time in Europe – which also took in spells at Atletico Madrid, Groningen and Ajax.

He also had his fair share of controversies, including punching the ball off the line to deny Ghana victory against Uruguay in the 2010 World Cup quarter-finals, biting three opponents in his career and being given an eight-match ban for racially abusing Patrice Evra.

BBC Sport takes a look at Suarez’s humble beginnings in Uruguay, and how a love story helped him become one of Europe’s most-feared strikers of the past 17 years and finish as his country’s all-time top scorer.

‘Luis told me he would play for Barcelona’

Born in Salto, Uruguay’s second-most populous city where Manchester United’s Edinson Cavani was also born just 21 days later, Suarez was brought up in a large family with little money – so much so that his mum Sandra once described how they could never afford a pair of football boots for him.

At the age of seven, Suarez moved to Uruguay’s capital Montevideo with his parents and six brothers, playing youth football at Urreta before switching to Nacional aged 14.

He impressed in the youth ranks before being given his first-team debut in May 2005 against Junior of Colombia in the Copa Libertadores – but things went far from smoothly for him.

His first goal didn’t come for four months and he missed so many chances his own fans used to jeer him.

Nacional’s then manager Martin Lasarte told BBC Sport: “The character of Luis was very important for all those months without scoring. For Nacional, Suarez was the best youth player of the club, but he had to win a place in the first team as Bruno Fornaroli and Martin Cauteruccio were the fans’ favourites.

“I had a walk with him one day after training, told him that he was going to sit on the bench in the next match, and I remember Luis got so mad with me. He didn’t understand that was the best for him but, instead of being depressed or furious, he did double training on his own.

“I remember another day Luis told me he was going to play for Barcelona in the future, and he would not surrender until he did it. You know Barcelona in those days was like an impossible dream, but the history is marked – he made it.”

‘An animal that wanted more and more’

Thanks in no small part to Lasarte’s belief in him and Suarez’s own mental strength, the striker persevered and ended with 10 goals in 27 matches as Nacional won the Uruguayan title.

Suarez’s former Uruguay and Nacional team-mate Sebastian Abreu said: “He was like a young boy with a lion mentality. Luis has such a winner’s mentality, that he trained to win in everything he played. One day he came and told me ‘I know you all are in front of me in the squad, but I will beat you all’.

“He used the tough situations as a motivation for success – nothing was impossible for him, even in those days. He never showed off in training, he trained hard many times in secret without us knowing and got himself prepared to be the best striker of all time in Uruguay.”

Mathias Cardacio, a friend of Suarez who played in Nacional’s youth and first team with him, remembers how they used to turn up for training an hour early.

He said: “When we were in Nacional youth, we trained at 6pm, but he looked for me at 5pm to arrive early at the training ground to take shots and penalties before anyone else arrived. That was Luis every step, he wanted to perfect his skills. He didn’t want to lose at anything.

“I remember when we played Huracan for the Nacional youth team and we won 18-0, with 11 goals from Suarez. He couldn’t slow down, he was an animal that always wanted more and more.

“In every competition he wanted to win, whether it was playing football or in cards. He had a competitive thread in his body from when he was a small child.”

‘He was always thinking of Sofia’

Suarez’s exploits in front of goal earned him a move to Dutch top-flight side Groningen in 2006, where his 10 goals in 29 league matches brought a debut for Uruguay and a £6.75m move to Ajax.

The rest is history as, after 111 goals in 159 appearances for the Amsterdam club, he moved to Liverpool for £22.7m in 2011 before heading to Barcelona and then Atletico.

Former Groningen team-mate and fellow Uruguayan Bruno Silva says Suarez’s move to Europe was initially one born out of love, rather than a desire to enhance his professional career.

His girlfriend from the age of 13, and now wife, Sofia moved to Barcelona for family reasons aged just 15 and – while maintaining a long-distance relationship – Suarez was determined to move closer to her.

Silva said: “His decision to come to Europe was always thinking of being near his wife, Sofia, who was in Barcelona. He was determined, playing like a person that has the hunger to get to the top level quickly.”

Diego Forlan, who claimed the 2010 World Cup Golden Boot, added: “In the World Cup in 2010 and in Copa America 2011 where we won the championship, we saw an outstanding version of Suarez, in every training session he wanted to win, to be the best.