DOHA — The sight of a tearful Luis Suarez hiding his
face in his shirt and an enraged Edinson Cavani knocking over a VAR monitor
encapsulated Uruguay’s sadness and frustration at their World Cup exit.اضافة اعلان
For the two striking greats, both 35, it was a deeply
underwhelming and undignified way to leave the biggest stage for the final
time.
Uruguay beat Ghana 2–0 on Friday but crashed out of the
Qatar tournament on goals scored because of South Korea’s last-gasp 2–1 win
over Portugal.
But the South American side did not go quietly or with
dignity.
Their players surrounded and harangued German referee Daniel
Siebert after the final whistle, with the official dishing out two yellow
cards, including to Cavani.
There had been similar scenes during an incident-packed
match in which Siebert awarded a penalty to Ghana but waved away two Uruguayan
appeals.
Having hit the woodwork three times in their two previous
games and conceded another controversial penalty in their 2–0 defeat to
Portugal, Uruguay leave Doha with a lot of regrets and a feeling of what might
have been.
Suarez and his teammates believe they were the victims of
injustice, penalized by refereeing decisions that went against them, even after
VAR reviews.
“Leaving a World Cup hurts but we have the tranquility that
we GAVE EVERYTHING for our country,” Suarez wrote on Twitter.
“PROUD to be URUGUAYAN even though THEY DON’T RESPECT US” he
added in a barb presumably directed at world football’s governing body FIFA.
Anonymous
The sense of injustice was a common theme in the emotionally
charged aftermath of Friday’s match — a member of the Uruguayan delegation
berated a journalist in the post-match press conference about the penalty given
against the South American side in the Portugal game.
In truth, Uruguay’s demise was not a surprise since Suarez
and Cavani have had better days.
They occupy the top two spots on Uruguay’s all-time record
scorers’ list, with Suarez as number one, and were part of the teams that
reached the World Cup semi-finals in 2010 before winning the Copa America the
following year.
Injuries have limited Cavani’s game time in recent years and
while he has made an impressive start with his new club Valencia — four goals
in seven games — it is more than four years since he played 30 or more league
games in a single season.
He was a peripheral figure at the World Cup, starting only
one game, in which he was substituted off, and hardly having a shot at goal.
Suarez, for his part, spent the first part of this season
back in his homeland with boyhood club Nacional ahead of an expected move to
Major League Soccer after the World Cup.
His days on Europe’s biggest stages, playing for Ajax, Liverpool,
Barcelona, and Atletico Madrid, are over.
He was anonymous in Uruguay’s first two group games before
rolling back the years against Ghana, having a hand in both goals.
But he finished the game in tears after Uruguay fell just
short, burying his head in his shirt as the realization of failure sunk in.
Cavani lost his cool haranguing the referee, picking up a
booking, and then angrily knocking over the VAR monitor.
Suarez and Cavani were never likely to light up the World
Cup in Qatar but nobody expected them to leave it in this way — making
headlines for their emotional reactions rather than their goals.
It was a sad exit for two of the greats of the modern game.
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