Suarez - Biting Off more Than He Can Chew?

It is interesting that while the football community await the outcome of FIFA’s probe into the alleged biting incident at the World Cup game between Uruguay’s Luis Suarez and Italian defender Giorgio Chiellini, the media are out in force, along with a plethora of psychologists, debating the issue.

I am no stranger to biting myself, having only recently been bitten by someone who felt that this was their only defence when cornered and challenged, and took to the ‘fight’ rather ‘flight’ mode of retaliation.

I am no stranger to biting myself’ I have bitten someone, on two separate occasions.

The first time I must have been about 10 or 11 years old and bit a boy at school on the arm. I don’t remember doing, but what I do remember to this day is the sense of humiliation, as I was called up onto the stage during school assembly and shamed in front of everyone. In the case of my favourite teacher, I felt that I had badly let her down.

The second incident occurred some years later when, as a teenager, I accepted a lift home from a lad I’d met at a disco, only to have him stop the car and attempt to take a kiss too far. I bit into his arm and hung on until I drew blood. He soon lived to regret his behaviour, and I made my escape.

These were isolated incidents, and not something I’m planning to repeat, but what it demonstrates is that biting is usually an impulsive action, unplanned and a spontaneous response to a person’s emotional state.

Using one’s teeth as a weapon, either of aggression or in defense, reverts us back to the most primitive human state, before we learnt to make our own warheads. It also takes us back to our early years as unruly toddlers, when unable to express ourselves in other ways, biting does at least gain the attention of those on the receiving end.

During international sporting events, emotions of those participating, and observing, can run riot, and we have seen many examples over the years of when the adrenalin, and the pressure to perform, is running at such an astronomical level that all rational behaviour flies out of the window, resulting in unpredictable outcomes.

However, we have high, perhaps unrealistic expectations, of our sporting heroes as role models for those that idolise them, and increasingly expect them to behave in a way that is out of all proportion; they are after all human, just like the rest of us.

Biting by adults is unusual, although many of us will remember the time when Mike Tyson bit off Evander Holyfield's ear and spat it out, during the world heavyweight title fight in 1997; resulting in Tyson’s disqualification.

In the case of Luis, where this is the third incident in which he has been involved, it is most likely to have been carried out because of an intense sense of frustration. However, that, and the fact that it would appear that Giorgio is not going to press charges, does not excuse the behaviour. It is classed as common assault.

He may have found that in this case he has indeed bitten off more than he can chew. In the meantime, whilst I don't wish to trivialise the incident, I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find that the act of biting someone soon finds its way into our vocabulary, as ‘doing a Suarez’.