UPDATE: We strive for better sourcing than “some guy who gave one of our writers a ride who has a tenuous connection to a player on the team” but this seems worth sharing:
Let's start a weird Sounders rumor. Tonight, I caught a Lyft. The driver used to be a coach for a player who is now a Sounders midfielder. Other day, this player told him he thinks it's "90 percent" likely Luis Suarez is a Sounder.
— Mike Standish (@MikeStandish) November 25, 2018
It should probably be added that Suárez has scored six goals in 10 games with Barca since this story first published on Sept. 27, 2018. That includes a hat trick in El Clásico.
Luis Suárez is in the midst of a relatively down year. Through seven appearances with Barcelona, he’s scored just three times. Extrapolated over a 40-match season, that’s about 17 goals. That’s not a bad haul, but it’s not the standard Suarez is used to and it would be the fewest goals he scored since his first season at Liverpool, which was considered a massive disappointment.
That’s likely why there are now rumblings that Suarez is considering an offer from MLS, according to Spanish soccer website Don Balón. (It should be noted that Don Balón is notoriously unreliable among Spanish soccer observers.)
In case you’ve forgotten, Suárez has particularly strong ties to one MLS team: The Seattle Sounders.
One of Suárez’s best friends is Sounders midfielder and Uruguay teammate Nicolas Lodeiro. Lodeiro has been openly recruiting Suárez almost since he made the move to MLS himself back in 2016. As recently as January, Lodeiro was telling reporters that he thought Suárez would eventually come to MLS.
The biggest complicating factor in all of this would be money. Suárez is apparently signed through 2021 and being paid about $20 million annually. Even at 31, his market value is pegged at around $70 million. These are not numbers the Sounders — or likely anyone in MLS — are going to approach. Adding another layer of complication is the possibility that MLS won’t allow teams to have three DPs making more than $1.5 million per year under contract beyond next season. Raúl Ruidíaz and Lodeiro are both already signed through at least 2020 and making more than $2 million per year.
But chances are, if Suarez is seriously considering a move to MLS it’s not as a final payday. He surely knows that if he leaves Barcelona before the end of his contract that he’ll be taking a financial hit. I suppose it’s not entirely outside the realm of possibility that he’d be willing to accept a contract in the $1.5 million range, just as Zlatan Ibrahimovic did with the Galaxy earlier this year.
Of course, this is all apparently predicated on Suarez not feeling as though he’s playing at the level he expects of himself. This could all become moot if he returns to type of scoring pace he was on as recently as last year, when he scored more than 30 goals across all competitions.