In the second exclusive extract from his new book, Luis Suárez maintains that his use of the word ‘negro’ in his row with Patrice Evra was misunderstood by people who do not speak Spanish

Did I use the Spanish word “negro” in an argument that took place, in Spanish, with Patrice Evra on 15 October 2011 in a game between Liverpool and Manchester United?

Yes.

Is the word “negro” the same in Spanish as it is in English?

No, absolutely not.

Am I a racist?

No, absolutely not.

I was horrified when I first realised that is what I was being accused of. And I’m still sad and angry to think that this is a stain on my character that will probably be there for ever.

I knew that Liverpool vs. Manchester United was the biggest game in English football for all the years of rivalry, and maybe even more so since Manchester United surpassed Liverpool in the number of league titles won.

It wasn’t my first game against them. We had played the season before and there had been no problems; the usual run-ins and clashes but nothing that I remember.

I first became aware there was a problem when Damian Comolli approached me after the game and asked me if anything had happened between me and Evra. At first I struggled to remember anything specific.

There had been an argument, but then I had probably had quite a few arguments during the game. Comolli said to me: “Well, they are complaining about racism.” I was very surprised.

I recalled that the referee had called us over at one point. Evra had come looking for me at a corner asking me why I had kicked him. It is always a bit hypocritical when a defender who spends the whole game kicking you complains of being kicked.

He initiated the argument and he chose to do so in Spanish. In the following exchanges between me and him I used the Spanish word “negro” once.

What some people will never want to accept is that the argument took place in Spanish. I did not use the word “negro” the way it can be used in English.

As I am now fully aware (and I did not even know this at the time), in English there is a word that is spelled the same way but is pronounced differently and it is highly offensive: negro, pronounced nee-gro. Negro (pronounced neh-gro) in Spanish means “black”, nothing more. It is not in itself an insult. Now, people will say: “Okay, but you said ‘black’ – you shouldn’t have.” But Evra had started the argument in Spanish and the Spanish language is full of these ways of addressing someone: “Guapo” (handsome), “Gordo” (fatty), “Flaco” (skinny), “Rubio” (blond), and so on. Just names based on physical characteristics, nothing more. Negro can refer to anyone with dark hair as well as dark skin and I’ve been used to the word being used in Spanish in this way all my life. My wife sometimes calls me “Negro” or (the diminutive version) “Negrito”. My grandmother used to call my grandfather “Negrito” and she would occasionally call me that too. I’m not trying to pretend it was meant in a friendly way to Evra because clearly we were arguing. But nor was it ever meant as a racist slur.

The second important point is that I said to Evra: “Por qué, negro?”. “Por qué” means: “Why?” It was me asking him why he was complaining, first about the foul and then about me touching him. I told Comolli this, but by the time my version had been passed down the line to the referee it ended up not as “Por qué, negro?”, but as “Porque eres negro”, which changes the meaning drastically; “porque” doesn’t mean “why?”, it means “because” – the phrase became “because you are black”. I never said, nor would ever dream of saying, “because you are black”. And I certainly never said, and never would say, that I would not talk to Evra, or anyone, because they are black.

But nobody had time for these subtleties when I was being condemned for racism. Especially not after the tone had been set by Evra’s original accusation that I had called him not “negro” but “nigger”, which he later admitted was wrong. He changed the accusation later but the stigma of me being someone who would use such an abusive term stuck.

According to Evra I had used the N-word – which at first he said was “nigger” and then changed to “negro” – five times. But he was the only one that heard it and even he was not sure what he had heard. I had said it once, in the context I have explained above, without intending any racist meaning at all. But on the basis of his accusation I was found guilty.

I told Comolli what had happened. He then told Kenny Dalglish and they both told the referee and it was that version that went to the hearing.

Why did I not go to the referee’s room myself? Because nobody told me to and because I did not speak good English. I’m not saying this is Comolli’s fault.

Absolutely not. He is the one who had to transmit exactly what I had said to the referee and there are intricacies and nuance in the language where you have “Por qué” and “Porque”, and you have the word “negro” as it is used in the Spanish language and how it can be used in English.

Regardless of how “por qué” became “porque” there were about twenty-five cameras focused on the action, and three lip-readers asked to study the footage, and nothing shows me saying what I was accused of repeatedly saying. And no one else heard me say the word despite the fact that according to Evra I had said it five times to him in about ten seconds. Later he told French television channel Canal Plus it had been “ten times”.

Evra doesn’t speak Spanish very well. He started the argument in Spanish but it was very basic Spanish – as if I was to say in English: “Why you hit me?” It was hard for me to understand what he was saying to me. I remember he called me “Sur Americano” – “South American” – but I didn’t understand much more than that.

If you don’t speak Spanish, then don’t accuse me of insulting you in that language, let alone insulting you ten times. I can’t understand why he didn’t confront me in the tunnel. If it had been so offensive wouldn’t he have grabbed me and said: “What did you say to me out there?” And I would have said to him: “If you really think I said that, then you have not understood me properly.”

In the next few days, as I started to realise how serious the situation was, I decided I would not say another word. I could have said a lot of things. Maybe I should have said a lot of things. The club told me to stay silent and I was also conscious of the fact that it would be better to say nothing rather than say things when I was angry. I had not been in England long. My English was still very poor. Language at the time was a far bigger problem for me than it would be now.

Maybe someone should have told me: “Luis, we have every camera angle and none of the footage shows you saying ‘negro’; just deny it.” But I was honest. Some people didn’t want to understand that I said “negro” in Spanish during an argument in Spanish and in a way that I just didn’t understand to be racist and absolutely did not intend to be racist. Maybe I would have avoided all problems if I had just denied ever using the word. Instead I told them what I had said, not least because I did not understand it would be a problem.

What hurts is when people say: “Luis Suárez? – good player, bit crazy sometimes … and a racist.” Or worse: “Luis Suárez: racist.” Nothing else, just that: racist. The word hurts, the accusation is painful. I think that is why I reacted the way I did at Fulham when I showed the finger to some abusive supporters and picked up another ban. All I could hear was that word.

Put “Luis Suárez” into an internet search engine and up comes the word “racist”. It’s a stain that is there for ever. And it is one that I feel I do not deserve.

Afterwards, no opposing defender, black or white, used what had happened against me. There were no provocations along those lines. Black players still came to swap shirts at the end of games. That made me really happy but I was conscious of not wanting to be seen as the guy who goes out of his way to prove he is not a racist. Sometimes I felt I couldn’t win. If I swapped shirts with a black player it was because I was a racist trying to hide my racism; and if I didn’t swap shirts with a black player it was also because I was a racist.

Once the formal letter from the FA had reached the club, I don’t really think we knew the best way to go about dealing with it. The lawyers took control of the case. They told me throughout the hearing: “Don’t worry, you answered the questions well and things are being said that go in your favour.” They said that it would be two or three games if any, as if the number of games rather than clearing my name was the most important thing. Looking at it now with a cooler head, I don’t think we handled it well. We were not able to put across that this word was used in Spanish and that it has nothing to do with the “negro” word as it is pronounced and used in English; that fact never really got grasped by anyone at the hearing. All that people saw was: “Suárez said ‘negro’.”

The days of the hearing were awful. I got up at 6.30 every morning to be at the hotel where it was held by 7.30. A taxi would come to pick me up and I would go on my own every morning and I would return at eight or nine o’clock at night having spent the whole day in one of the meeting rooms at the hotel waiting to be called. And in the end, amid all the talking, I was only actually asked to give evidence once in the four days. I would speak to my wife on the phone and she would ask: “What are you doing now?” “Nothing, still just sitting here.”

I didn’t understand what I was supposed to be doing there. What was my function locked up in that room? The lawyers explained to me that there was no proof of any sort that I had done anything wrong, but that I was being accused of having changed my story, that I was now saying I had said one thing but that, via Comolli, I had told the referee I had said something else. Basically, they said my story did not seem credible because of that. They took more notice of what Damien and Kenny had relayed I said, than what I was now telling them I had said. I would be shown evidence from other players and witnesses and was supposed to verify it but it all needed translating and we all know how big the final report was. I still have it somewhere but I’ve never read it. I have it in Spanish and it’s about 115 pages long. If I read it now I will only get upset all over again.

I was banned for eight games and, much worse, got labelled a racist for life. You can call me “big-mouth”, “biter”, “diver”. There is proof. But to call me a racist – that hurts a lot. It’s a serious accusation. It hurts because of how it affects me, it hurts because my wife had to suffer too through the hearing, watching me getting accused of being someone she knows I’m not, and it hurts because in the future the stain will still be there when my children grow up. It’s a slur on my name that no one can take away.

I never asked for Evra’s forgiveness because I felt I had done him no wrong. If there was ever a chance of reconciliation, what happened pre‑match when I next played against Manchester United in February 2012 put paid to it. I had every intention of shaking Evra’s hand in the team line-up before the match. I had spoken to my wife about it before the game and said that I would. As I was walking down the line, Evra was shaking everybody’s hand, but he lowered his hand when I reached him. He shook Jordan Henderson’s hand before me, and his hand moved downwards, away from mine. The images are there for everyone to see. My hand stayed outstretched at the same level but once he’d lowered his, I thought: “Okay, he’s not going shake my hand,” and I continued along the line.

Once I had passed him he started with the show of grabbing my arm and protesting that I hadn’t shaken his hand. And he looked towards Sir Alex Ferguson to see if Daddy was watching. If it was a trap, I fell into it.

The headlines were written: “Unrepentant Suárez refuses to shake hands.”

Kenny was too worried about the game to worry about whether we had shaken hands or not anyway. He defended me throughout. He said to me: “Every time I go into a press conference I have to take a shield to bat off all the Luis questions: ‘Luis this; Luis that.’” He reached the point where he had to say: “Are we here to talk about football or Luis?” It was difficult for him. But he knows how grateful I am for all that he did for me.

The hearing left me with a stain on my character and I don’t ever plan to speak to Evra again in my life. He came out of it as the innocent victim and I came out of it with my character tarnished for ever.

People at the time said: “They [Liverpool] are defending him because he is a good player and they can’t afford not to.” No. They defended me because they knew me.

They knew what kind of person I was inside the dressing room. They knew how I was with my family. They knew what I’m like off the pitch.

They know me. They know I’m not a racist.