Uruguay mates leap to Suarez defense after eight-match ban

LONDON - Reuters

Luis Suarez was hit with an eight-match ban for his alleged racist remark against (L) and Manchester United’s Patrice Evra.

Luis Suarez was hit with an eight-match ban for his alleged racist remark against (L) and Manchester United’s Patrice Evra.

Liverpool striker Luis Suarez’s Uruguay teammates have leapt to his defense over his eight-match suspension in England for an alleged racist remark against Manchester United’s Patrice Evra. 
They said people in Uruguay, where a large percentage of the population is black or of mixed race, were not racist and used terms such as ‘negro’ in an affectionate manner or as nicknames. 

“They’re making a big mistake. It’s obvious that in England there’s a racism problem they’re trying to eradicate, and that’s good, but this sentence has no solid arguments,” Uruguay captain Diego Lugano wrote on his personal website. “Luis is a victim. I can’t understand how a player like Evra can do this. He’s breaking all the codes of football. We all know what kind of person Luis is and the values he has,” 
The English FA suspended Suarez for eight matches and fined him 40,000 pounds for racially abusing Evra during a Premier League match at Anfield in October. 

Lazio winger Alvaro Gonzalez, who won the Copa America with Uruguay in Argentina in July, said: “All of us who know Luis, we know that if he made this remark it wasn’t (meant to be) insulting. 
“We Uruguayans use terms that can be wrongly interpreted by people from other places...it’s not a reason to call a Uruguayan a racist,” he was quoted as saying by the Montevideo newspaper El Pais. He added that “Uruguayans often call friends ‘negro’ affectionately”.