With Barcelona, Spain and the Milan club Internazionale alike, the footballer Luis Suárez, who has died aged 88, was the complete inside-forward of the 1950s and 60s. A compound of power, skill, stamina and vision, he was the inspiration of the Spain team that won the European Championship in 1964 and excelled at club level in the European Cup, which he won with Internazionale in 1964 and 1965. For good measure he also twice helped Barcelona to the European Fairs Cup.
With his dark hair slicked back and always carefully parted, Suárez was reminiscent of an Argentinian tango singer of the 30s. On the field of play he had an elusive body swerve and a devastating right foot that provided him with more than 100 goals across his career. He was always, however, more of a creator than a marksman, and his laudable consistency allowed him to make well over 400 appearances during a highly successful 20-year span in the Spanish and Italian leagues. He was one of the greatest players Spain has ever produced.
Born and raised in A Coruña in Galicia, Suárez began work as an apprentice electrician and joined the local club, Deportivo de La Coruña, after answering an advertisement in a newspaper soliciting players. In 1953, three weeks after his 18th birthday, he made a spectacular debut for Deportivo against Barcelona, who bought him shortly afterwards for £14,000.
He won six major trophies with Barcelona – the Spanish league in 1958–59 and 1959–60, the Spanish cup in 1957 and 1959, and, in Europe, the Fairs Cup (which became the Uefa Cup) in 1958 and 1960, the year he also won the Ballon d’Or as European footballer of the year – still the only Spanish-born player to have won that honour. In 1961 Barcelona reached the European Cup final in Bern, in which they and their polyglot attack were strong favourites to beat Benfica. But the usually reliable goalkeeper, Antoni Ramallets, had a shaky day, and Benfica won 3-2.
Having made 122 league appearances at Barcelona, Suárez moved to Internazionale in 1961 for a world record £152,000, following his Barcelona manager, the flamboyant Argentinian Helenio Herrera, who had gone in the same direction shortly before. Operating largely as an inside-left at Internazionale, he struck up a formidable understanding with the left-footed Mario Corso, a deep-lying winger, and was a key element in the success of the “Grande Inter” era from 1960 to 1968, when the side became one of the greatest Europe has ever seen.
Although he was a wonderfully elegant player in many ways, and was nicknamed El Arquitecto (the architect), there was a ruthless side to Suárez. In the second leg of the European Cup semi-final against Borussia Dortmund at San Siro in 1964, he brutally kicked the opposing right-half, who was forced to abandon the field, leaving Dortmund to play with only 10 men. Suárez should, surely, have been sent off, but the Yugoslavian referee, Branko Tesanić – later to be found on holiday in the Adriatic at Internazionale’s expense – allowed him to stay on. So Suárez was able to go on to win his first European Cup medal when Internazionale beat Real Madrid 3-1 in the final in Vienna. The following year he won another, when Benfica were beaten 1-0 in heavy rain at San Siro, Liverpool having been controversially eliminated in the semi-finals, when there were again some odd refereeing decisions.
Curiously, though Suárez won 32 caps for his country, the first in 1957, he did not always express his talents to the full when playing for Spain. Perhaps, some felt, this was because he often played with the dominating Argentina-born centre-forward Alfredo Di Stéfano, a naturalised Spaniard, who brooked no rival conductor on the podium. Yet even in the 1962 World Cup in Chile, when a notionally injured Di Stéfano failed to play, Suárez was hardly at his best. In Viña del Mar he played alongside another naturalised Spaniard, Ferenc Puskás, in the 1-0 defeat by the Czechs, and then in a 1-0 win against Mexico, but was dropped from the team that played what turned out to be Spain’s final match, a 2-1 defeat to Brazil, in the group stages.
Two years later, however, he was the fulcrum for Spain when they won the European Championship (then known as the European Nations’ Cup). He took a firm hold on the Spanish midfield as Hungary were beaten 2-1, with difficulty, in the semi-final. Then Spain faced the Soviet Union, holders of the trophy, in the final in Madrid, and it proved to be a hard game as two goals came in the first eight minutes – first for Spain and then an equaliser for the Soviet Union. Thereafter Suárez, in the Spanish midfield, inspired his team, who eventually won their first major trophy, 2-1 through a goal by Marcelino Martínez.
In 1969 Internazionale tried, without success, to deploy Suárez as their libero, or sweeper, after losing their captain and highly defensive sweeper, Armando Picchi. Having made 256 league appearances and won three Italian league titles at Internazionale (in 1962–63, 1964–65 and 1965–66), in 1970 Suárez was transferred to the Genoa club Sampdoria, where he moved back into his favoured position in midfield and found a new life. Inevitably he was slower, but his skills and constructive flair remained, and he was able to weld a young Sampdoria team together until his retirement in 1973, having played his last game for Spain only the year before.
After that Suárez went into football management, with mixed results. Neither with Spain (1988-91) nor in his various spells with Internazionale was he truly successful, although as Spain manager he did at least take the team through the group stages of the 1990 World Cup finals in Italy, where they were eliminated in the first knockout round by Yugoslavia. He remained for many years on the Internazionale staff, stepping in from time to time when a manager was sacked. Together with his old team-mates, Giacinto Facchetti and Sandro Mazzola, he continued to be employed by the club until 1999.
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