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FRIDAY June 13, 1986. The day I experienced my very own Giorgio Chiellini moment.

All right, so I wasn’t actually bitten by a Uruguayan but one of them did try to chop me in two about 30 seconds after kick-off, below, and received the quickest red card in the history of the World Cup.

Now Luis Suarez must join countryman Jose Batista in football’s hall of shame and although no normal human being can begin to understand why he did what he did to Chiellini, I have my own theory.

I’ve been carrying it with me for the last 28 years, ever since Scotland walked off that pitch in Mexico with our campaign – and ankles – in tatters.

I’d never seen anything like this before. Uruguay were diving, spitting, shoving, kicking, scratching and spitting again and, even though they stopped short of biting us, I remember wondering why these people behaved like that.

Then I looked out the window of the team bus as we drove back out through the city of Neza and suddenly the penny dropped.

Some of the sights shocked me to the core. Believe me, this place was a hellhole and it had more than a million people living in it.

We drove past a horse that was lying dead by the side of the road, there were kids running about with no clothes on and families living on top of garages under sheets of tarpaulin. It was horrendous.

If you or I lived in a world like that, as many Uruguayans do, then we’d be capable of doing just about anything to escape it. That’s why these guys don’t think twice about what they do in order to win a football match.

Kids from places like that are so desperate to be a footballer that they become capable of doing just about anything to win. If one of them makes it big then he can take about 100 of his family and friends out of these ghettos too.

This is real life and you have to remember what these people have come through and what they have been forced to do just to survive. I also think anyone who makes it out will live with a real fear that one day they might end up back there.

So the other day I asked Gus Poyet if I was being patronising. He shook his head and said: “You’re absolutely right – we behave differently because we come from a very different background.

“As kids playing football we weren’t driven to the game in daddy’s car. We had to squeeze on to some battered old bus and we knew, wherever we were going, we’d have to fight our way back out if we won the game.”

That’s the way guys like Gus and Suarez grew up – learning to fight just to survive. But it doesn’t excuse what Suarez did nor does it make it any less mind-blowing.

I was talking to Ian Wright about it over breakfast and he was telling me how he consciously tried to make sure he didn’t do anything crazy on a football field. But he couldn’t do it. If there was a fight he had to be in the middle of it – he couldn’t help himself.

Wrighty fought with, growled at or smacked every player under the sun but, despite all that, you can’t dislike the guy when you meet him.

It’s impossible to dislike Ian Wright.

But during a game of football, players can be overcome by their inner demons. It’s the same with supporters.

I remember when we were at Aberdeen, myself and Mark McGhee went to Tannadice to watch Celtic. Jim McLean wouldn’t give us good tickets so we ended up on the terracing beside the tunnel. Before the game we mingled with Celtic fans and had a bit of banter.

But as soon as it kicked off they went bonkers. “What are you looking at Strachan you ******* wee midget?” That sort of stuff.

Then it calmed down again at half-time and the same guys were coming up to us asking what we thought about the game. That’s what football does.

But Suarez has taken it a stage further. To bite one player is bad enough but to bite three? And to do it again here? With the world watching? Quite clearly, the demons took over to such an extent that he lost all ability for rational thought. There is no other explanation.

How are we supposed to get into the mind of someone who does that? It’s a job for a psychiatrist. I can’t work it out because at no point during a game did I ever think to myself: “He’s annoying me, I think I’m going to eat him.”

So what do we do? Put him in a Hannibal Lecter mask before we let him to play? Muzzle him? It’s such a shame because he’s wonderful to watch.

It’s not just his talent, we also enjoy the fact that he’s a battler. He’s like an old school street fighter and we enjoy it because we were the same as kids. I grew up watching Tommy Gemmell, Billy Bremner and Denis Law – they weren’t just top footballers, they were street fighters too.

But Suarez has to learn that this sort of thing is too much. It can’t be tolerated.

Someone needs to work out what’s to be done with him and that will be difficult. I’ve heard all the talk about banning him from all football for two years but I’m not sure that would stand up in court because effectively FIFA would be denying him a livelihood.

Nobody stopped any of the bankers from making a living after they had put the whole country in the grubber. Some mugs even gave them new jobs and if they are allowed to keep on working then Suarez should be allowed to keep playing.

But he needs help. This is a special case – and not because he’s such a talented player but because of what it is that he does. Talent shouldn’t come into it.

We can be guilty of giving players or managers leeway because they’re successful. That shouldn’t be the case here but we have to help this lad out because he has a problem.

He hasn’t done anything terminally wrong, he’s not broken legs or gouged eyes out. He’s just bitten one or two people and we need to try to help him stop it.

There’s an argument there are more dangerous players out there, guys who go out to break legs or smash jaws. That was certainly the case a few years ago. In my day, when someone told you they were going to try to break your leg you could be sure they meant it.

But the game has moved on and cleaned itself up. Most bad injuries now are caused by players twisting and turning and this has allowed the good players – like Suarez – to play.

In fact, that’s why we’re getting such a festival of football at these finals because the ball players are protected and it makes for a better game.

But it’s almost certainly over now for Suarez and it’s ending in complete and utter shame. He’s dug himself out of deep holes before and can do so again.

In Monday’s column, I wrote he could end the World Cup as one of the greats, a rival to Messi and Ronaldo. Two days later there’s more chance he’ll be remembered as football’s Mike Tyson.