Those deep teethmarks in Italy defender Giorgio Chiellini’s gnawed shoulder? Those were an accident, Uruguay striker Luis Suarez said in a letter to international soccer officials this week.
Suarez has succeeded in bringing international excuse-making to a whole new level of wild implausibility with his brilliant explanation for Chiellini’s nibbled skin. Suarez’s excuse is more elegant than the proverbial “dog-ate-my-homework” excuse and it’s more sophisticated than the Mike Tyson excuse after he bit Evander Holyfield’s ear off: “He kept [head]butting me … What am I supposed to do? I’ve got children to raise.”
Suarez, in a letter to FIFA appealing the ban he was handed down after the incident, said: “I lost my balance, making my body unstable and falling on top of my opponent.”
“I hit my face against the player leaving a small bruise on my cheek and a strong pain in my teeth,” Suarez added. (Ah yes, the absent-minded jaw chomp into a vice-like clench around your opponent’s exposed shoulder.)
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FIFA objected, saying the bite was “deliberate, intentional and without provocation,” Bloomberg reports.
After the game, Suarez was banned for nine official games and given a four-month suspension from all soccer activity, meaning that his Uruguay squad enters into the World Cup’s Round of 16 knockout round without its star player.
