In his new autobiography, Luis Suarez has once again sought to play down his tendency to bite his fellow professionals, whilst complaining that he was treated “like a criminal” when told to leave the Uruguay camp at the World Cup this summer.

The forward has spoken of the moment when Uruguay coach Oscar Tabarez informed him that his ban meant he had to immediately leave the Uruguay team hotel in Brazil. His departure came in the wake of the four-month ban from football he received after he bit Italy defender Girogio Chiellini.

“It was as if I was being treated like a criminal,” Suarez, a man who seems to lack any self-awareness, recalled. “The only reason I did not cry was because the coach was there.”

It is probably worth stating that had Suarez bitten an individual on the street, he would, in all likelihood, have faced criminal proceedings.

It wasn’t the first time Suarez had bitten an opponent either, nor even the second. PSV Eindhoven midfielder Otman Bakkal, Chelsea’s Branislav Ivanovic all felt the Uruguayan’s teeth before he sank them into Chiellini.

Of the bites, Suarez said that his wife, Sofia, asked him after the first one, “What on Earth were you thinking?”

One wonders what she had to say after the second and third bites…

“I made a mistake,” he said. “It was my fault. It was the third time that this happened to me and I needed help,” but the striker also said that he felt he was used a scapegoat by FIFA and said “maybe I was an easy target.”

You tend to make yourself an easy target when you repeatedly bite people on the football pitch. Suarez seems unaware of this, preferring instead, to regard himself as the victim of the sorry saga.

The Barcelona forward also criticised Premier League football where “you can break someone’s leg and not be sanctioned” and added that “biting appalls a lot of people but it is relatively inoffensive or at least it was in the incidents involving me.”

Claiming: “none of my bites were like that of [boxer] Mike Tyson to Evander Holyfield, but no one cares about that.”

The moral highground beckons.

Joking aside, Suarez does have a legitimate point about potential for injury of dangerous challenges. Take a look at this little compilation and also take note of the number of occasions the perpetrator dives to the ground as if he was the victim.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eF4kSWnY2Z8