The battle to return Luis Suarez to the pitch will take one final turn on Friday, with the appeal of his FIFA ban being heard by the Court of Arbitration for Sport. Despite having a first appeal rejected by football's governing body, Suarez's Brazilian lawyer Daniel Cravo believes he has a strong enough case to see his client's nine-match suspension reduced.
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"There was dissatisfaction with how other incidents had been treated at the World Cup and Suarez paid for them," Cravo said (via the Daily Mail). "Not even the sanction of [Zinedine] Zidane in 2006 or those of Leonardo and [Mauro] Tassotti in 1994 were as severe. Is the Suarez incident the worst in the history of the World Cup?"
"I believe that the sanction, which affects his work at a club level will be revoked," he added. "There is no precedent in history to justify it. I am going to try and reduce his ban with Uruguay. Nine games is too much and would stop him from playing until 2016."
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Suarez's suspension would see him miss the 2015 Copa America and potentially the 2016 Copa America Centenario to be held on American soil.
Cravo went on to finish his statement, proclaiming: "[The CAS] is totally different and on various occasions in the past they have taken completely different decisions to those which have been taken by FIFA."
What Cravo failed to identify, however, is his pursuit to reduce Suarez's four-month ban from all footballing activities, which would keep him from participating in the 2014 La Liga campaign until at least October.
Note: Credit all statistics to officially licensed data from Opta Sports (via Squawka).
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