Is there any player more perfectly suited to the style, history and general pulse of a football team than Luis Suarez is to Liverpool? The buck-toothed bandit. He's the archetypal Liverpool player in every imaginable way. A superb talent matched only by his polarity; beloved and hated in equal measure. Controversy courted at every corner. And the goals. Holy Jesus the goals that this guy scores! Luis Suarez fits this team like a glove – it’s actually hard to imagine him playing for anyone else now. Though it nearly happened…

In the off season Suarez drew headlines suggesting that he was planning to leave Liverpool. Missing the Champions League once again was crushing his ambitions and above all the English media was ripping him to shreds at every opportunity. Real Madrid was floating around. That could well have happened, but how boring would that have been, putting Luis Suarez in a team where Ronaldo runs the show and now Gareth Bale feeds on the scraps? Manchester City may well have been sniffing around like a stray dog too, looking to buy a rival’s goal-scorer just so that nobody else could have him - like they did with Carlos Tevez (only on a bigger scale). But ultimately he signed a new contract and all was well. A few pictures of him playing the happy husband and caring dad in the papers. Next thing he’s scoring goals at will and putting Norwich defenders in straitjackets.

I'll be honest, I don't like the guy. For a number of reasons, really, the diving, the goals against my team, the helping Liverpool to succeed (subjectively), his teeth, and, oh yeah, the fact that he's a complete racist. But even still, what a waste it would have been for the Premier League if Liverpool hadn’t sorted that drama out. First of all, Liverpool woulda been screwed themselves: Suarez is their main man and the focal point of their play, especially since Steven Gerrard seems to be doing a Michael Owen with his late career fitness. And secondly, the EPL would have lost its number one villain, and no great blockbuster goes without a villain. Imagine if Batman just handed out parking tickets for two and a half hours of Christopher Nolan-directed intensity? (Granted any opportunity to spend two and a half hours watching Christian Bale these days is never time wasted). It’s fine to hate the guy, he BIT another adult human being after all, but you cannot deny him.

Anyway, that hate has to be directed somewhere. Liverpool has been drawing it as a club for decades, just as Manchester United in the past 20 and every other team that’s won anything recently. (Not so much Arsenal, people mostly seem to think they deserve something by now). This is why Suarez and Liverpool are such a great match. The Scousers of the 70s and 80s were the most successful English team ever, on par with Sir Alex’s Man Utd at least (United won more, but Liverpool were better in Europe –  a debate for another day). And if you’ve ever met a Liverpool fan, no matter the age, whether they were even alive for that era or not, they won’t let you forget it. They’ve been drawing heat for so long from the rest of England, that nobody can even remember a time when they were anything close to sympathetic towards the Reds. In the same mould, Suarez just cannot get away with anything in England. If he doesn’t wash his hands after taking a slash at a nightclub, it’ll be in the papers. He’s traditionally successful, he’s a dick about it, and lots of people hate him. He IS Liverpool.

Does any other top English club have a player that so perfectly defines the aura and fanbase mindset of that club? Newcastle had it in Alan Shearer. John Terry came close for Chelsea circa 2004, (missing that penalty shootout effort a few years later helped him there) but he’s always been too one dimensionally stoic and laboured. Wayne Rooney plots to leave Man Utd every couple years so he’s out, and Robin Van Persie is ineligible for his Arsenal connections. Even Roy Keane or Eric Cantona, for all their immeasurable influence at that club, were too focussed on themselves to really melt into the club’s universal agenda. City has too many weapons to choose from, Tottenham don’t even know who they are anymore (and Gareth Bale was out of their league anyway). Everton are of an unwaveringly team first conviction. Arsenal? Well, they had Thierry Henry once upon a time, who passed this difficult test. A once in a generation player who finds himself at exactly the right team and at exactly the right moment. Put that into context with Luis Suarez and that’s what Liverpool has. Only instead of being adored for flair and beauty (with an air of petulance, to be fair) like the Arsenal of 2002, everybody hates them instead. On any other team he might be a burden, the kind of guy that the talkback territorials say things like “sure he’s good, but is he worth all the drama” about. Mario Balotelli, basically. But not at Liverpool, they’re fine with being the bad guys. At Liverpool he’s the footballing messiah.