Liverpool striker Luis Suarez has revealed that he owes his wife for helping him keep his mind in football during his teenage years.
In a new book Vamos Que Vamos, which tells the stories of the Uruguay squad that reached the 2010 World Cup semi-finals and is being serialised in The Guardian, the 26-year-old explained how Sofia was a crucial factor for him in maintaining discipline during his formative period as a person.
"Up to the age of 12 I knew that I wanted to play football, but afterwards, from 12 to 14, I went through a phase in which the football wasn't going well for me and I didn't want to study. I didn't like to train," he said. "I only liked playing the games and that way it was going to be very difficult for me to achieve something. I got really angry. I was a rebel and that worked against me.
"It was a big change in every sense [when I met her]. I was very lazy about studying and she helped me to realise that it wasn't because I was a dunce that things weren't going well but because I wasn't interested.
"I began to score goals. And I got to the point where I almost broke the Nacional youth record. The record was 64 goals in a full year and I scored 63. Things like that gave you confidence."
Suarez added that when Sofia moved to Barcelona, he "realised" that he had to work hard to play for Nacional's first team and impress a European club.
"That was when I really realised that if I wanted to be close to her I'd have to work hard," he said. "I'd have to wake up. So I set to work much harder than I needed to.
"I wasn't free to go there nor her to come here because of the money situation. So I had to train to the max to be able to succeed in Europe."
Suarez met Sofia when he was 15 and she was 12, and they got married in 2009.
Subhankar Mondal
