Luis Suárez Threw Himself A Temper Tantrum And I Can't Really Blame Him

Uruguay are in big trouble at the Copa America after dropping their opener to Mexico, 3-1 on Sunday, then falling 1-0 to Venezuela this evening. They only managed to out one shot on frame tonight, and striker Edinson Cavani was awful. He is Uruguay’s best healthy attacker (more on that in a second) and he put forth another poor performance for his country, which he’s made an unfortunate habit of. But good lord, this miss is something else.

Uruguay have more talent (midfield excepted) than anyone else in their Copa group, but they haven’t played cohesively at all. The goal they gave up was a fairly silly one too.

Anyway, they’re floundering in part because their best player, Luis Suárez, hasn’t seen the field. He wanted to take part in tonight’s match, but coach Oscar Tabarez ruled him out because of a hamstring injury. After warming up for 15 minutes or so, it appears Suárez was informed that he was not on the active roster and therefore couldn’t play. He was not happy.

This Copa America is a pretty bizarre tournament that doesn’t really have a good soccer reason to exist, but it’s still the biggest international tournament Suárez will get a chance to participate in until the 2018 World Cup. Tabarez has legitimate cause to rest him (qualification for that World Cup), but I get the striker’s frustration at having to sit there while Cavani just flounders around and does a whole bunch of Not Scoring. Barring a wild set of circumstances, Uruguay’s goose is cooked at this tournament and Suárez will have had nothing to do with it. That’s probably not how he wanted to spend his summer, but at least nobody will grab their dick at him for a while (hopefully).