Luis Suarez, Uruguay and Liverpool striker, has been banned for four months ban by Fifa after being found guilty of biting Giorgio Chiellini, Italian defender. He will miss the remainder of Uruguay’s World Cup campaign, including the second round match against Colombia on Saturday.
Television replay showed Suarez biting Chiellini prompting Fifa’s Disciplinary Committee to open an investigation. The findings of the committee were announced at a media briefing in Rio on Thursday morning.
The sanction includes an €82,000 fine and the player’s ineligibility to play for Liverpool until the end of October and the remainder of the World Cup. He also runs the risk of not being able to participate at next summer’s Copa America.
The Uruguay FA and Suarez himself can appeal the sanction but the ban will stand until that process has been completed. A Fifa statement read: “The player Luis Suarez is to be suspended for nine official matches. The first match of this suspension is to be served in the upcoming Fifa World Cup fixture between Colombia and Uruguay on June 28, 2014.The remaining match suspensions shall be served in Uruguay’s next Fifa World Cup match(es), as long as the team (remains in the competition), and/or in the representative team’s subsequent official matches. The player Luis Suarez is banned from taking part in any kind of football-related activity (administrative, sports or any other) for a period of four months. ”A stadium ban is pronounced against the player Luis Suarez in accordance with article 21 of the Fifa Disciplinary Code as follows: the player Luis Suarez is prohibited from entering the confines of any stadium during the period of the ban.The player Luis Suarez is prohibited from entering the confines of any stadium in which the representative team of Uruguay is playing while he has to serve the nine-match suspension. The player Luis Suarez is ordered to pay a fine in the amount of 100,000 Swiss Francs.”
Claudio Sulser, the chairman of the Fifa disciplinary committee, said the panel had taken into account all the factors in the case. Sulser said: “Such behaviour cannot be tolerated on any football pitch, and in particular not at a Fifa World Cup when the eyes of millions of people are on the stars on the field.The disciplinary committee took into account all the factors of the case and the degree of Mr Suarez’s guilt in accordance with the relevant provisions of the dode. The decision comes into force as soon it is communicated.”
Surez will now go into a second successive season with Liverpool carrying a suspension for biting. Last season, he missed the Reds’ opening games as he was still serving a ban for biting Chelsea’s Branislav Ivanovic towards the end of the 2012-13 campaign. It was not his first ban for such an offence. In 2010, while playing for Ajax, Suarez bit PSV’s Otman Bakkal to earn himself a seven-match suspension.