The infection of the feet of clay

A commemoration in Sarajevo on the 100th anniversary of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the spark that set the fuse to the European tinderbox that would blow up as World War One, was attended by Austrians, Bosniaks and Croats.  But the Serbs and Bosnian Serbs stayed away.  For them, the assassin, Gavrilo Princip, a pawn of Serbian secret services, is a hero.  Killing the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, who was proposing greater autonomy and rights for the Empire's Slavic southern flank - a direct threat to Serbia posing as the champion of these peoples - was a victory for nihilism and power politics but at what cost - the deaths of millions and then tens of millions more in the Second World War whose genesis was closely linked with the events at the end of World War One.  The Serbs also have a morbid obsession with the scene of their greatest defeat (Kosovo) rather than focusing on their greatest ruler Stefan (IV) Dušan - choosing victimhood and martyrdom as some small nations in assuming a put-upon national identity.  Had Ferdinand survived, there would have been another clash further down the line that produced the Great War but this murder made it certain.  Princip was not a hero but a villain, a villain not just of the twentieth century but of all history.
Luis Suárez is not in the same solar system as Princip, let alone league in terms of his crimes and misdemeanours yet the antithesis of Roy of the Rovers has turned his country into a nation of rogues and his national team, the villains of the World Cup, exactly as he did four years ago when his handball prevented Ghana from becoming the first African representatives (at the 'African World Cup' in South Africa) to reach the semi-finals of the football World Cup.  Ghana failed to take advantage of the resulting penalty (which they missed) and man advantage and so it was Suárez's crime that allowed Uruguay to progress to the semi-finals.  No neutral wanted them to go any further though.  Far from being a pariah in his home country, he was fêted.
Now that he was captured on live television biting an Italian opponent (with the Italian revealing the bite marks on his shoulder), the third such time in his career, Uruguay went into meltdown, ranging from slating the victim as a tell-tale to blaming a FIFA and/or British media conspiracy.  Next to no-one in Uruguay thought Suárez had done wrong, even if they accepted that there were bite marks (an important exception was the final surviving member of Uruguay's last World Cup winning squad).  The president, a former urban guerilla, said footballers weren't role models and brandished Suárez on his balcony upon the latter's return.
Except footballers are role models.  At the England-Uruguay game, one English fan bit off the lower part of the ear of another English fan.  Would the assailant even thought of such an attack had Suárez not inspired him?  This is just one reported incident but how many kids in playgrounds will be tempted to 'do a Suárez'?  The Uruguayan president has made himself an ass and the bulk of the Uruguayan people have shamed themselves through abandoning concepts of rationality, decency and fair play, becoming a parody of a nation rather than a serious one.
I would have preferred Suárez kept his teeth to himself and lit up the World Cup with his skills, just as he did in the last Premier League season.  Liverpool almost won it but fell at the final hurdle.  We should not forget though that Suárez was banned for five games at the start of the season - a holdover he got from the ten game ban he received the season prior for biting a Chelsea opposing defender.  Those games he missed might have been the difference between Liverpool being crowned league champions and finishing 'second last'.  Liverpool fans (claimed under the name of Boris Johnson to be susceptible to a victim culture) were similarly ridiculous in defending the indefensible.  Feeling persecuted by outside forces, they closed ranks around Suárez, just as they did when Suárez was banned for racially abusing another player.  Liverpool's reputation has been dragged through the mud so often by their best player that they have forfeited the tag of the 'neutrals favourite', at the very point at the end of last season when they had reclaimed it once more.  Adopting an aggressive attitude not dissimilar to that of Millwall ('no-one likes us, we don't care') does them no favours.
The worst aspect of this whole farrago is that Suárez is unrepentant.  He is psychologically challenged but his biting actions are deliberate and there is no remorse afterwards.  Partially this is because when growing up, there were no consequences for his violence.  When an investigative reporter published accounts of Suárez's behaviour in the Uruguayan national youth squad, the president of the youth squad hired a hitman to bump of the journalist.  The gunman, however, took pity on his intended target and shot the reporter 'only' in the leg.  The would-be assassin wound up behind bars for grievous bodily harm and the president of the national youth set-up went to prison for attempted murder.  As Uruguay indulges in idol worship of Suárez, again the pressure if off him.  If Wayne Rooney had committed a third biting offence, there would be a national campaign for him never to represent England again.  Suárez's apologists are actually his worst allies - why should he modify his behaviour when there are so many telling him that he is not in the wrong.  Comically, Diego Maradonna and Joey Barton are the most prominent ones outside of Uruguay supporting Suárez - the former an exposed junkie who got away with his handball cheating against England in 1986, the latter one who has served time in jail for assault (in his free time) and later was banned for twelve matches following three violent actions in the space of 100 seconds.  Yes, a broken leg is worse than many a bite (unless flesh is actually ripped off) but you don't go on the football pitch expecting it to happen and person who will inflict the leg-break didn't intend to do it when they woke up that morning, will most likely never do it again and probably be sorry about it.  Yet now anyone entering the same pitch as Suárez will feel apprehensive about going near him - Suárez has gained an advantage when he returns to playing after his four month ban.  Suárez's latest excuse for what he did in the Uruguay-Italy match was that he had his mouth open and his teeth accidentally touched his victim (omitting the unnatural jerk of his head towards his meal) - sounding suspiciously like the sarcastic cuckold rationalising 'oh, you just happened to slip and fall on his dick, then?'  As silky as his footballing skills are, Suárez is probably not fit to be a footballer.