It is a truism that in Uruguay football has always taken the place religion plays in many countries. It has also played a huge part in our creation myth. Uruguay is a small country surrounded by giants, it has existed for fewer than 200 years and most heroic stories people tell their grandchildren are of football victories rather than war epics. Among them is, of course, the Maracaná, where Uruguay beat Brazil in their home stadium to win the 1950 World Cup.

We have built a national myth about winning. Winning against all odds, against every possible adversity. We laugh when the English talk about the beautiful game. There was a very popular coach in Uruguay, Julio Ribas, who said football should not be beautiful, that if you wanted beauty, go watch ballet.

Football is about winning. This does not mean it is acceptable to step on a rival’s face in order to score but it implies that once you walk on to a pitch, a whole new set of moral rules come into place, very different to the ones that manage the chaotic, confused outside world.

Go to any of the amateur football fields around Montevideo and you will witness the toughest games you will ever see. Games between people that work in the same office, class-mates, childhood friends are so intense that almost everything is accepted to win.

Once the game is over, those same guys will get together, drink a beer and laugh, and anything that happened on the field stays there.

This ultra-competitive spirit is the explanation for how a country of three million people can develop such a critical mass of elite footballers, as Uruguay does. And it is the only reasonable explanation for Luis Suárez.

In a land that makes a religion of winning, of leaving the last drop of sweat on the field, where a virtuoso like Nicolás Lodeiro gets credit only when he dives head-first to block a ball like he did against England, it is obvious that a man like Suárez will be a national hero. Someone who is a millionaire by his own effort but will put his life on the line to gain possession, to score a goal, to win a game. He represents all the values that we consider validate a real footballer.

So when his goals and his behaviour started turning him into a global figure, and when the international media put its magnifying lens over him, we contrived two explanations to justify his attitudes. First it was his troubled youth: a divided family with financial problems, his early departure from the family home in Salto to enrol in Nacional’s youth team. But, to be honest, this was not quite enough, at least in Uruguayan eyes. That is probably the story of nine out of 10 players in this country. So to the second explanation and another local speciality: the conspiracy theory.

If there is a myth that impregnates Uruguayan football, it is the obsession that there is always a plot against us in the politics of the game. That we are not an important economic market, that we usually bring down the big names in events, and therefore represent bad business. This idea will only gain currency after the heavy and unprecedented sanction against Suárez, especially when, should Uruguay get past Colombia, a quarter-final against Brazil is the likely outcome.

Thus the reaction to Suárez’s offence of the team captain, Diego Lugano, who claimed “it’s well-known that the English media are against Suárez”, or the coach, Óscar Tabárez, who said that his star player is the “usual target of certain English press” and that “this is a football World Cup, not a cheap morality tournament”. Even José Mujica, below, Uruguay’s president and probably the only personality who can rival Suárez for worldwide notoriety, came out in his defence, insisting there is a campaign against him and that he is a “great kid”. He added: “We didn’t choose him to be a philosopher, a mechanic, or because of his good manners, he is just an excellent football player.”

All this is not meant as visceral defence of Suárez. Most Uruguayans will not forgive me for writing in an English newspaper without raising the flag and defending our guy from what is seen here as an aggressive, unfair and somehow (ironically) racist campaign from the English media. But biting? A professional player, who knows hundreds of cameras are pointed at him? Someone who makes millions and represents the dreams and expectations of a whole nation? What was going on in his mind? From Diego Maradona to Mike Tyson to Tiger Woods, most of the attributes that create an elite athlete are what make them so difficult to understand for mere mortals. But in Suárez’s case, there is something else.

His Liverpool career is followed passionately in Uruguay. People go to bars and debate heatedly about games at Anfield as if they were part of the local league. Usually there are comments about how cold players are, how they don’t care about defending properly, how for most of them there is no difference between winning and losing. We have an expression that defines this kind of player and attitude: “pecho frío”, or “cold heart”.

No one will ever accuse Suárez of having a cold heart. He might do the craziest things on a football pitch, but you can bet your soul he will leave his skin on that field. In a cold, materialistic world, that is the ultimate quality any Uruguayan wants in a player. That’s why people here love him. That’s why they will forgive him for almost any sin. And that’s why they will always defend him, as the local expression goes, with their claws and teeth.

Martín Aguirre is the editorial director of El País in Montevideo