Adaptation is always cited when a player comes in from another country to ply his trade in the Premier League. The physical nature of English football, with its high tempo and crunching tackles, has been a major cause of some player’s failing to perform in one of the best leagues in the world. It is said, that to make it in England, you have to have certain characteristics to adapt to its style. Liverpool manager Kenny Dalglish said this about Luis Suarez this week:
“He’s a good person. He’s bubbly and just loves playing football. For the style he is, both as a player and a person, I don’t think he’d find it difficult to fit in anywhere. That’s great credit to him.”
It is a fact that is clearly evident from the Uruguayan’s performances so far that he has seemingly needed no time to adapt whatsoever. Even those with the most ideally designed characteristics for the rigours of English football, it is said that it takes most players at least 6 months to adapt to the tempo and speed of thought necessary to play at the top of your game week in, week out in the Premier League. For some, less ideally suited to the style, it takes even longer to adapt, and for others, the adaptation never takes place at all.
Many of those who failed to adapt came from the lesser leagues of Europe, especially Holland. For every Ruud van Nistelrooy and Sami Hyypia, there is a Mateja Kezman and Alfonso Alves, and for that reason, I certainly wasn’t the only one who was thinking that spending £22.5million on Luis Suarez could have been a risk. Spending more money than we did on Fernando Torres to land the player, could have obviously back fired, but as you can tell from King Kenny’s comments, he never expected the Uruguayan to fail. Both himself and Damien Comolli had done their homework, and knew what they were getting.