In the end, was saying sorry really so hard?

The reaction to Luis Suarez’s refusal to shake hands with Patrice Evra was predictable, with the Sunday papers resembling a competition between correspondents to see who could condemn Suarez and Liverpool in the most strident terms. The Sunday Times probably took the honours by describing the “loathsome” Suarez as “South America’s greatest charmer since General Pinochet”.

Footballers, even ones who refuse handshakes, are rarely compared with mass-murdering dictators. Suarez’s problem was that having snubbed Evra, he had effectively declared open season on himself, and had the football media moving against him in pack mode, sicked on to him by Alex Ferguson.

Ferguson’s attack on Suarez after the game was extraordinary. It was impossible to recall him excoriating an individual opposition player in such terms: a disgrace to his club who should never play for them again.

Of course, when Ferguson was faced with a dilemma similar to the one Kenny Dalglish faces now, his attitude was very different.

By comparison with Eric Cantona, Luis Suarez is a model professional. He came to England for a huge fee from a big club where he had become captain after a brilliant career. When Cantona arrived in English football it was effectively as a disciplinary refugee from France. He had never stayed out of trouble long enough to build a career with any French club. He fought with teammates, attacked referees and responded to a disciplinary procedure by walking up to each member of the disciplinary panel to insult them individually.

Cantona’s reputation at that stage was even worse than Suarez’s after his ban for biting an opponent, and he proceeded to burnish his legend by collecting a series of spectacular red cards. When Cantona got away with a kick at the head of a Norwich City player in 1994, Jimmy Hill called the foul “despicable and villainous”. Ferguson’s response was to call Hill a “prat”, and accuse the BBC of having an anti-United agenda (a curious form of paranoia that was echoed by Dalglish over the weekend, with his suggestion that Sky’s 24-hour news coverage had contributed to the Suarez problem).

In the end Cantona blew up at Selhurst Park, committing an unprecedented assault on a spectator, to near-universal media condemnation. It was a disgraceful act that brought shame on his club and probably cost his side the double that season, just as Ferguson speculates Suarez has cost Liverpool a European place this time.

Yet Ferguson did not respond, as he now urges Liverpool to respond, by kicking the wretched wrongdoer out of his club. Had he done so, nobody would have questioned it, the media would have praised his toughness, and the fans would have reluctantly accepted that their hero had it coming: look at his record.

Instead, drawing deep on reserves of patience, trust and understanding, Ferguson stood by Cantona, believed in his human potential, and was repaid with renewed brilliance, given greater intensity by the player’s respect and gratitude. A man the world had written off as incorrigible proved he was a reformed figure. He was never sent off again.

Maybe Ferguson has forgotten all that, or more likely he hopes Dalglish has. While fulminating at Suarez and roaring on the mob of those eager to see the Uruguayan driven out of English football may give him some pleasure, deep down Ferguson knows Dalglish would have to be a prat to listen.