Those bites, those goals, that handball: Suárez retires as Uruguay’s top scorer

Inter Miami CF striker Luis Suárez is ending his historic run with the Uruguay national team.

The nation's all-time leading scorer with 69 goals, Suárez, 37, announced Monday he will retire from international duties after Friday's Fifa 2026 World Cup qualifier against Paraguay in Montevideo, Uruguay.

“Friday, it's hard to even say it, will be my last game with my country's national team,” said Suárez said. “But it's something I'd been thinking about, analysing. I think it's the right moment because I have my reasons.

“I'll play with the same hopes I had in my first game in 2007, with the same enthusiasm and the same hopes of that 19-year-old kid. And this old, veteran player with this incredible national team career will give his life on Friday.

“Why? Because that's how I was taught from the beginning, to give everything for my country.”

Suárez has made 142 appearances for Uruguay, playing in four World Cups and winning the 2011 Copa America title.

In his debut MLS campaign, Suárez has posted two consecutive braces and is tied for third in the league with 16 goals through 20 matches for Inter Miami this season.

Suárez will be remembered mostly for his brilliance as a supreme goalscorer, but the hot-tempered player's career has also been marked by controversy. 

Suárez has earned a reputation at club and international level for biting players, which he did on at least three occasions in his career. 

While at Ajax Amsterdam he was banned for seven games after laying his teeth into the shoulder of PSV Eindhoven midfielder Otman Bakkal. 

The most famous incident was when he again bit Chelsea's Branislav Ivanovic in 2013, which was missed by the referee as Suárez later scored and the striker later scored to earn a draw for Liverpool. The FA later slapped him with a 10-game ban. 

At the 2014 World Cup in Brazil Suárez left bite marks on the shoulder of Italy's Giorgio Chiellini, which was again missed by the officials. But Fifa came down hard on the player with a four-month suspension and nine-match ban that ended his tournament. 

Suárez is well remembered in South Africa for providing one of the 2010 World Cup's most controversial moments when he hand-balled Ghana striker Asamoah Gyan's goal-bound shot on the line, which would have made the Black Stars Africa's first semifinalists. 

He is winding down his club career at Miami in the US's Major League Soccer in a mega-star forward combination with his one-time Barcelona teammate Lionel Messi. 

Reuters