In December 2023, shortly before signing for Grêmio, Luis Suárez warned that his footballing days were numbered. His right knee had become so painful, following a Covid-affected rehabilitation from surgery in 2020, that he could barely walk. “In my last stage of recovery, the pandemic came and I had to do exercises on my own and I couldn’t finish stretching my knee,” he told Uruguayan media. “On the inside I have cartilage wear and that hits the bone. The days before each game I take three pills and hours before playing I get an injection. If not, I can’t play. Hence the limp. I have to think that in maybe five years I won’t be able to play five-a-side football with my friends. The truth is that the first steps in the morning are very painful. Anyone who sees me thinks that it is impossible for me to play a game. My son asks me to play with him and I can’t.”
Suárez has always been a divisive figure throughout his storied career, with incidents that have wildly swung between the sublime and the repugnant, but most – excludingDavid Luiz,the nation of Ghana,Patrice Evra,Branislav Ivanovic,Giorgio Chiellini(11 years to the day!) andNorwich City– will agree that it is a good and remarkable thing that the striker is still playing football. Just how he is doing so for Inter Miami, 18 months on from his above comments, is baffling, particularly as 38-year-old Suárez is not only just hacking it around with his friends or his son, but still scoring absolute worldies on the biggest club stage of all [subs, pls check]: the Copa Gianni.
Just in case you didn’t stay up until 2am (BST) to watch Inter Miami 2-2 Palmeiras, Suárez rolled back the years in putting the MLS side 2-0 up, beating two men with a wily turn, sending Palmeiras centre-back Bruno Fuchs to the shops with a textbook chop, before El Pistolero fired brilliantly into the top bins with his “weaker” left foot. Whatever you might think about Suárez, the Copa Gianni in general or the notion thatInter Miami should even be at the tournament, it was a goal for the ages and one that ultimately secured Miami’s passage to the knockouts.
Miami’s reward for coming through the group stage, or punishment for allowing Palmeiras to draw 2-2 and top the group, is a last-16 meeting with PSG, the rampant Bigger Cup champions who probably don’t need extra motivation to play well at the moment. But Lionel Messi’s acrimonious 2023 departure from the French club (where the Argentinian later admitted he “wasn’t happy on a daily basis”) and the heavy presence of four other former Barcelona players in Miami’s squad – manager Javier Mascherano, Suárez, Jordi Alba and Sergio Busquets, who all took part inLa Remontada, the 6-1 (6-5 agg) Big Cup comeback, and PSG’s most infamous defeat – means Sunday’s match is one that is now dripping in narrative. That current PSG boss Luis Enrique was manager of Barça that night at Camp Nou only adds to the intrigue.
“We’ll be facing the [Bigger Cup] champions and we will have to try and take our chances,” yelped Suárez after his heroics against Palmeiras. “Luis Enrique has seen many players and he influenced me a lot. I already had a competitive DNA but he made me even more competitive.” Slightly less helpfully, Mascherano was a little more forthright: “[PSG] are probably better than us, but in football you never know.” Spine-tingling stuff, Javier! So, while that rhetoric doesn’t quite match the pre-battle war-cries from Braveheart, Any Given Sunday and 300, Mascherano, Messi, Suárez, Alba and Busquets will have one more shot at toppling the elite. One would think they don’t have a hope against the might of PSG, but then we didn’t think Suárez would be kicking a football at all in 2025, and you only need to checklast night’s highlightsto see how that theory panned out.
It is almost impossible to train or to make a session because of the weather. This morning’s session has been very, very, very short. Tomorrow will be our 60th game of the season. The ones who had international games had even more” – Enzo Maresca wipes his brow before trying to express the difficulty and danger involved in organising Chelsea sessions with shattered playersin egg-frying 41C heatat Copa Gianni.
Dear Football Daily, the assertion that Jude and Jobe Bellingham became the first brothers to score in the same tournament (yesterday’s Football Daily) is untrue. I expect there may be other examples, but Frank and Ronald de Boer both scored for the Netherlands in Euro 2000” – Thomas Lovegrove.
I’m sceptical about this weird Copa Gianni but some of the matchups have been entertaining. My favourite goalkeeper so far is Botafogo’s. While Atlético Madrid busied themselves writing their ‘Dear John’ farewell letter to the tournament, he came off his line to steamroller an opponent and a teammate before punching the ball away, recovered to block the follow-up shot from point-blank range, tossed the dead ball behind his back, beyond the reach of an incensed opponent, then theatrically threw himself to the ground when said incensed player bumped him. Dear John, never change” – Peter Oh.
The trailer for the new film about Roy Keane and Mick McCarthy at the 2002 World Cup, with someone who looks nothing like Roy Keane and someone else (Steve Coogan) who looks nothing like Mick McCarthy,appears to be as rubbish as you might expect. It won’t beatthe lowest grossing film in US historyobviously” – Noble Francis.
Please send your letters tothe.boss@theguardian.com.Today’s winner of our prizeless letter o’ the day competition is…Peter Oh.Terms and conditions for our competitions, when we run them, can be viewedhere.
It’s our man David Squires on …making Transylvania great again. Oh yes, you’re going to like this.
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