Luis Suarez claims he would have been forced to retire if he had slipped up against Chelsea like Liverpool midfielder Steven Gerrard did last season.
The Reds were on an 11-game winning streak heading in to the home game with Chelsea and were favourites to secure their first title since 1990, but the result against Jose Mourinho’s side did not go according to plan, with Gerrard’s famous slip giving Demba Ba the chance to score, which he did.
Luis Suarez, now at Barcelona, admits he would have been tempted to retire had it happened to him.
“If I had been in Stevie’s shoes, I don’t know if I would have been able to carry on playing,” the Uruguayan writes in his new autobiography.
“Emotionally, it must have been very, very hard.
“In the previous weeks, so much had been said about him, the expectation had built so much, the talk had been about him leading Liverpool, his club, to a first title in over 20 years, on the 25th anniversary of the Hillsborough disaster, in which his cousin had died, and then that happens.
“The captain, the former youth-teamer, the one-club man, a Scouser born and bred, and he was the unlucky one to make a crucial mistake.
“He still hadn’t won the league title. Stevie had started to believe, we all had. And now it had been virtually taken away from him and like that, with him slipping against Chelsea.
“I’m convinced that if Chelsea had not scored like that, they would not have scored at all. And once you are a goal down against them, it’s virtually impossible.”