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Last season, Pepe Reina headed out on loan and immediately began badmouthing Liverpool and Brendan Rodgers for their handling of his situation. This season, Iago Aspas has headed out on loan and immediately badmouthed FIFA and their handling of the Luis Suarez situation. From a Liverpool perspective, then, the on-loan striker's rant is an improvement. From most others not so much.
"They are treating Luis like a murder and not like a footballer," Aspas told radio station Cadena Cope when asked for his take on Suarez' four-month ban from all football-related activities thanks to his biting of Giorgio Chiellini. "There are murderers who pay less for what they have done. To not let him be presented by Barcelona, to train, or to enter a stadium is too much."
The average murder might disagree that not being able to be paraded about by his new club is a punishment that exceeds what you usually get for killing a person. The Spanish Criminal Code, for instance, sets out that homicide is to be punished with a prison sentence of 10-15 years. In England, a mandatory life sentence is imposed.
One imagines that were Luis Suarez to be convicted of murder in either Spain or England, Barcelona wouldn't be free to parade him about. Suarez also wouldn't be free to enter stadiums or train with teammates. Though of course, one imagines—or hopes at least—that Aspas doesn't actually believe Suarez is literally being treated worse than a murder.
He was just being embarrassingly hyperbolic. And he hasn't been the only one to engage in wild hyperbole when it comes to Suarez' latest bite and punishment. As disproportionate as Suarez' punishment by FIFA may have been, some of the reactions to it that invoke dictators and human rights violations have been quite horrible in themselves.
Taking to the airwaves to publicly proclaim that Suarez has been dealt with more harshly than a murder might not be the only case of Suarez-related hyperbole, then, but it certainly sets a new high bar. Or perhaps a low one.
