Luis Suarez insists that he has no regrets for his actions that led to Ghana being knocked out of the FIFA World Cup 12 years ago.
In 2010, Suarez's Uruguay met Ghana at the quarter-final stage in South Africa. With the game tied at 1-1 in the dying moments of extra-time Dominic Adiyiah's header was blocked on the line by Suarez's hands.
The Uruguayan was sent-off for an intentional handball and a penalty kick was awarded to Ghana. Asamoah Gyan missed the kick and Uruguay went on to win the penalty shootout.
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It may be over a decade later, but Ghana fans have never forgotten about Suarez. In their eyes, he stole away a place in the semi-finals for the African side. At today's press conference for tomorrow's highly awaited clash between the two sides, Suarez chose not to apologise despite being called 'The devil' by a Ghanaian journalist.
"I don’t apologise about that because I did the handball, but the Ghana player missed the penalty, not me.
“Maybe I can say an apology if I did a tackle, injured a player, and took a red card. But in this situation, I took a red card, the ref said penalty, (and) it’s not my fault, because I didn’t miss the penalty.
“The player who missed the penalty, he said he would do the same in this situation. It’s not my responsibility, to shoot the penalty.”
When the prospect of Ghana looking for revenge was brought up, the former Barcelona and Liverpool striker was nonplussed and couldn't quite get his head around the fact that people were still talking about a game from three world cups ago.
"No, I haven’t really thought about this.
“I don’t know what people are saying, whether they are saying this, revenge. But players that will play tomorrow might be eight years old back then.
“Some people might say ‘the Devil himself’, ‘he did that’… We can’t misunderstand things.
“We won against Portugal in 2018 (in the World Cup last 16) – have we heard Portuguese people saying ‘we need revenge’? No.
“What I did with (Italy’s Giorgio) Chiellini (when he bit the defender at the 2014 World Cup in Brazil) – I played against him afterwards. I made a mistake, and then we shook hands. You can’t just keep thinking about the past and just focus on revenge.”
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