Luis Suarez threw a temper tantrum after Uruguay coach Oscar Tabarez refused to bring him on, with his team eventually going down 1-0 to Venezuela in the Copa America Centenario on Thursday. The result meant Venezuela are in the quarterfinals, while Uruguay are done and dusted with Mexico beating Jamaica in the later game.
Down 1-0, after Salomon Rondon was on hand to slot in a rebound off a shot from a Alejandro Guerra shot which struck the crossbar, Suarez began warming up as the minutes ticked on and when he asked Tabarez if he could go onto the pitch, with the striker desperate to make an impact as Uruguay's hopes faded away, the Barcelona man did not react in a greatest of manners when he was asked to sit back down on the bench.
Suarez, who picked up a hamstring injury at the end of his Barcelona season, was listed as "injured" in the team sheet at the start of the match, which meant while he was eligible to sit in the bench and encourage his teammates, he could not get on the pitch, not that, that would have mattered to the striker, who only wanted to try and keep his team in the hunt for a place in the quarterfinals.
"There is no situation," Tabarez said later when asked about the Suarez situation. "Even if a player is upset, I'm not going to put in a player who isn't 100%."
For Venezuela, this was a brilliant result, and after a 1-0 win over Jamaica in their Copa America Centenario opener, another similar result has now taken them into the knockout rounds.
"Today we showed the Rocky (the fictional boxing champion played by Sylvester Stallone) we have inside," Venezuela coach Rafael Dudamel was quoted as saying by AP, after guiding his team to their first win over Uruguay in the Copa America. "That fighter who never gives up, who may go down, but gets up again.
"The players always believed in themselves. We asked them, you think we have the players to do it? And all of them said 'yes', without any hesitation."
