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As the holder of an English degree, there is an itch I just cannot scratch by working with spreadsheets and numbers all day, which is how I pay the streaming bills. To exercise those otherwise dormant composition skills, I've settled mainly on reading and critiquing public apologies by sportspeople. Perhaps this is not the best thing to choose to do with my time, but when I compare it to the decisions sportspeople make that require them to issue public apologies, I start to feel much better about it.
As you are no doubt aware, Luis Suarez – an incredibly talented, increasingly old, and perpetually volatile soccer player from Uruguay – made some headlines following the Seattle Sounders' 3-0 thumping of his Inter Miami team in the Leagues Cup final. After the final whistle, Suarez (who is 38 years old) put Sounders midfielder Obed Vargas in a headlock. Vargas (who just recently turned 20 years old) responded by simply pointing and laughing in Suarez's face. While Suarez's teammate Sergio Busquets (who is 37 years old) aimed a flaccid punch at Vargas' jaw, Suarez himself engaged in some shoving and shouting with several other Sounders players and staff, culminating in him stepping on the foot and spitting in the face of the Sounders' security director, Gene Ramirez (age unknown, but considerably older than Suarez).
So far, so Suarez. He has a long history of controversial actions on the soccer field, and none of this is all that surprising. In fact, you might argue that it represents a more mature and reserved version of him, given what has come before. Ramirez himself seemed to acknowledge this afterward, joking that he was "expecting a bite."
Of course, Suarez has since apologized, and of course, his apology wasn't a very good one. Due to popular(?) demand, I've decided to go ahead and give Suarez's apology a look and see how it could be improved. However, since I've only just recently decided to anoint myself Apology Editor, I've also decided I should take a trip into the past and review Suarez's numerous previous apologies, to see if he has shown any growth over the years, and if there may possibly come a day when instead of biting or spitting on an opponent, he instead resolves his anger by merely headbutting or nipple-twisting them instead. That would be progress.
I do warn you, however; Suarez's history means that this one will be a very long walk indeed. You may abandon this ship now while you have the chance.
The first bite
To begin our journey, we must go all the way back to 2010, when a spritely 23-year-old Suarez was playing for Ajax in the Netherlands. During a match against PSV Eindhoven, Suarez sank his teeth into opponent Otman Bakkal's shoulder after arguing with him about something or other during a stoppage in play. Maybe the argument was Bakkal betting Suarez that he wouldn't take a bite out of him for seemingly no reason, and Suarez issuing a clear and decisive rebuttal. Whatever the case, Suarez was suspended for seven games, and went onto Facebook to offer an apology, back when going on Facebook wasn't just something you did to get medical advice from lunatics.
It should be noted that this is the translation I found of the original apology, which was in Spanish, so I can't vouch for it completely, but I think it does well enough for you to get the gist:
"Hello everybody. I wanted to use this media to say that I feel very sorry about what happened to me against PSV. I apologize to Bakkal and to all Ajax supporters. Being the captain, I am aware I didn't make the right decision. I did something wrong. In those moments you can only feel your heart beating strong, you are not able to think about what you are going to do, and after you just feel bad and regret. I am very self-critical and I do know I am not like that. Right now my only task is working hard. Thank you guys for listening."
Again, my lack of Spanish fluency and the somewhat stilted nature of the translation lead me to believe that there are some nuances of speech being lost here. But notice that he doesn't mention what he actually did, instead couching it in general terms as "something wrong" (and bizarrely, as something that happened to him), before following the time-honored tradition of reassuring us all that he is actually "not like that." Back in 2010, with this being the only time anyone had witnessed Suarez attempt to remove a chunk of flesh from a fellow human being with his teeth, you may have been justified in giving him the benefit of the doubt on that last point. However, you'd also have been justified to feel that maybe he had one or two other tasks he needed to work on besides just "working hard."
Another bite
In any case, the apology had been made, the punishment handed out, and everyone moved on, confident that just as they had gone their whole lives beforehand without Luis Suarez apologizing to them for biting someone, so they would spend the rest of their lives without... oh hang on what's happening now in 2013 a mere three years later? Oh, it's Luis Suarez, now a more mature and respectful 26 years old, now playing for Liverpool in the most popular soccer league in the world, now once again sinking his teeth into an opponent on the field of play, this time Chelsea's Branislav Ivanovic, an act for which he would receive a 10-match ban. Oh, okay. Well, take it away again, Luis:
“I am deeply sorry for my inexcusable behavior earlier today during our match against Chelsea. I have issued an apology and have tried to contact Branislav Ivanovic to speak to him personally. I apologize also to my manager, playing colleagues and everyone at Liverpool Football Club for letting them down.”
You know what? Fair play, Luis. This is really pretty solid as far as public apologies go. I mean, it does sound suspiciously like a statement released through the club (it was), but I have to assume that Suarez at least gave some club official a casual, half-interested thumbs-up when they told him they'd be releasing an apology on his behalf, so credit where it's due. And anyway, he later took to Twitter to publish his own, deeply personal apology:
“I’m sad for what happened this afternoon, I apologize Ivanovic and all football world for my inexcusable behaviour. I’m so sorry about it!!”
Again, I'll give him the benefit of the doubt here. Normally, I would say we don't really care if you personally feel sad about it – the emotional state of the person you bit into is probably a little more relevant – but with him not being a native English-speaker, I can chalk that up to translation issues.
Other than that, it’s a substantial improvement. Aside from being a challenging concept to wrap your head around in regard to a fully-grown adult male, you have to admit it shows some impressive growth, the way he totally nailed that apology the second time he was caught biting into another person.
The Patrice Evra incident
I should note here that I have skipped over an incident that occurred in between these two bites, when Suarez was accused by Manchester United's Patrice Evra of racially abusing him during a match. I didn't want to interrupt the bite-to-bite flow of the action, but it is worth bringing up because of how it relates to the whole cultural clash/language barrier issue. The accusation levelled by Evra was that Suarez repeatedly referred to him as "negro" during the game; Suarez would eventually sort of admit to it, although both he and his team (in maybe the lowest point of Liverpool's recent history) originally contested his eight-match ban on the grounds that he wasn't trying to be racist. As Suarez himself not-really-apologized:
"I admitted to the commission that I said a word in Spanish once, and only once. I never, ever used this word in a derogatory way and if it offends anyone then I want to apologise for that...I told the panel members that I will not use it again on a football pitch in England.
The low-hanging fruit here is the phrase "if it offends anyone," which is a common apology tactic that completely undermines the apology itself. After all, your task here is to apologize for what you have done, whether or not it actually offended anyone. Your responsibility is to take responsibility for your own actions, and not the feelings of others. If you are truly regretful for what you have done, and recognize that it was wrong, whether or not anyone was bothered by it is irrelevant.
The rest of the apology is potentially more complicated; as I've mentioned before, I am no expert when it comes to the nuances of the Spanish language, and certainly not how it intertwines with Uruguayan cultural norms. However, I do think I am savvy enough to understand context in a general sense, and the context in which Suarez used the term "negro" – at an opponent; in a tense match against his team's biggest rival; repeatedly (despite his assertion he used it only once, he was caught on camera at least mouthing it several times); and with a look on his face that in no way suggested he was genially greeting an old friend of his that would be totally okay with him using that word – all points to the same conclusion the league came to, which is that yeah, Luis, we think you were probably being abusive in that moment, and using a racially-charged term to do so, and you've lived and worked in Europe long enough to know exactly what you were doing, and that is way not cool.
Since this happened prior to bite No. 2, and we've seen how much more direct and sincere-seeming his apology was in that case, we'd once again be justified in thinking that Suarez was at long last beginning to grow up a little bit; that he now realized this sort of behavior is just absolutely unacceptable; that for someone of his high profile, competing in some of the world's biggest and most-watched sporting events, biting an opponent was something he simply could not allow himself to do again. I think you can sense where we are headed with this.
A third bite
During the 2014 World Cup, in a group match against Italy, Suarez was jostling for position with legendary Italian defender Giorgio Chiellini. Clearly not winning a battle he was never going to win on size and strength alone, Suarez broke out his not-so-secret weapons one more time, chomping down on the back of Chiellini's left shoulder. As Chiellini went to show the referee the freshly-imprinted teeth marks left in his skin, Suarez fell to the ground, clutching his face, as if somehow Chiellini's shoulder had attacked his innocent incisors. This third time turned out to be the charm, in turns of punishment; FIFA – which rarely makes a sensible decision in any situation – banned Suarez from "all football activities" for four whole months.
This happened just over a year after the Ivanovic bite, so certainly Luis would remember that the best form of apology is a simple, sincere message of regret. He probably didn't have to scroll too far back in his Twitter posts to get a sense of what that looked like, if he needed a reminder. Unfortunately, the epic circumstances of the bite, and the epic punishment that followed, were matched in epicness by his apology as well. Here it is, in full:
"After several days of being home with my family, I have had the opportunity to regain my calm and reflect about the reality of what occurred during the Italy-Uruguay match on 24 June 2014. Independent of the fallout and the contradicting declarations that have surfaced during these past days, all of which have been without the intention of interfering with the good performance of my national team, the truth is that my colleague Giorgio Chiellini suffered the physical result of a bite in the collision he suffered with me. For this:
- I deeply regret what occurred.
- I apologize to Giorgio Chiellini and the entire football family.
- I vow to the public that there will never be another incident like [this].
Montevideo, 30th of June 2014"
Presumably, there were more than a few mouths left as agape as Luis Suarez's in mid-bite when they saw this one. I should emphasize that the bullet points are Suarez's, not mine; this is the apology exactly as it appeared when it was issued, excepting the "this" I added at the end, since his original was inexplicably cut off with no punctuation at that point.
Now look: I love a good set of bullet points as much as the next person, but they absolutely do not belong anywhere near a sincere apology. Nothing screams "hastily thrown together school project" more than a few bullet points on a Powerpoint slide, and that's basically what Suarez presents to us here.
And of course, there is the all-time hall-of-fame phrase "suffered the physical result of a bite in the collision he suffered with me," which is possibly the most tortured use of the passive voice ever conceived in any language currently extant on Earth. This is "I'm sorry if you were offended" pumped full of steroids, slathered in rocket fuel, and blasted into the heart of the sun. It is the supernova of terrible apologies. It is worth a four-month ban all by itself.
Chiellini, of course, accepted the apology.
Leagues Cup postgame
And so that leads us to the present day where, true to his word, Luis Suarez has thus far avoided biting another human being, at least in front of television cameras on a soccer field. I'm sorry, let me rephrase that; I should say that thus far, other people have avoided suffering the physical results of bites that occur due to physical collisions with Luis Suarez's teeth. Yes, that sounds much better.
On the other hand, Gene Ramirez has now unfortunately suffered the effects of an expectoration as the result of a physical collision with the air between his face and Luis Suarez's mouth, so there's still work to be done, maturity-wise, for the Uruguayan star. And as enjoyable as it has been revisiting Suarez's career highlights, I am here to evaluate where he is now, apology-wise, and to see if indeed growth has been achieved, however low the bar may have been set. In his apology for the spitting incident against the Sounders, he says:
"First, I want to congratulate Seattle Sounders for their victory in the Leagues Cup. But, above all, I want to apologize for my behavior at the end of the match. It was a moment of great tension and frustration, where things happened as soon as the match ended that shouldn't have happened, but that doesn't justify the reaction I had. I was wrong and I sincerely regret it. It is not the image I want to project, neither in front of my family, who suffers because of my mistakes, nor in front of my club, which doesn't deserve to be affected by something like that. I feel bad about what happened and I didn't want to miss the opportunity to acknowledge it and apologize to everyone who felt bad for what I did. We know there's still a long way to go in the season and we're going to work together to achieve the success that this club and all its fans deserve. A hug to everyone."
There are some hints of genuine culpability and regret in all this, in the same way there are hints of actual flavor in a can of La Croix. And I will give him credit for the overdue recognition of how his actions have an impact on others, particularly his family. But that is all undercut by the additional, unnecessary window dressing that surrounds it.
If only he had just left it at "I want to apologize for my behavior at the end of the match. I was wrong and I sincerely regret it." That is an actual apology. And he does say those things. But then he also says "things happened as soon as the match ended that shouldn't have happened," an attempt to justify what he did immediately before stating it doesn't justify what he did. He apologizes "to everyone who felt bad for what I did," a sentiment we've already covered; but also, it really is he who should be feeling bad about what he did, which is the whole point of the apology in the first place.
All in all, I can't say I see much growth in Luis Suarez over the years. Sure, you can argue that spitting is maybe less of an offense than biting; you can point to the fragments of actual apologies that appear within his half-hearted attempts at conciliation. But ultimately, we may have to accept Suarez will forever be as he is today; an imperfect creature, holding his front teeth in surprise at the collisions the world at large has thrown at them, against his will, out of his control, and certainly not his responsibility.
You must forgive us, Luis, for not taking you up on that hug you offered at the end of your latest apology. We've all seen what happens when people get too close to you.
