Luis Suarez refuses to apologise for infamous 2010 handball against Ghana

At a pre-match press conference in Doha, Suarez was told by a Ghanaian journalist that many in the country see him as “the devil” and want to “retire” him.

An unrepentant Suarez responded: “I don’t apologise about that. The Ghana player missed a penalty, not me. Maybe I could apologise if I made a tackle and injured a player.

“But in this situation I took the red card and the referee gave a penalty. It is not my fault because I didn’t miss the penalty. The player who missed the penalty, he said he would do the same [as I did]. It is not my responsibility to shoot the penalty.”

Suarez added that “you can’t just keep thinking about the past” and made that point that Giorgio Chiellini, the Italian player he bit in 2014, had shook his hand and moved on from that episode.

“I played against Chiellini afterwards,” said Suarez. “I made a mistake with what I did and then we shook hands and played. You can’t just keep thinking about the past and revenge, because it would be counter-productive.”