Smile Luis! Those teeth will be the most famous in the world one day: Schoolboy Suarez years before the storm... and the sinister story of how his first big match ban ended with a reporter being shot

• Former teacher: 'He could be hot-tempered, but Luis never bit anyone'
• But Uruguayan journalist claims he was banned for 12 matches aged 16
  
• Suarez was shown red card for arguing with referee Luis Larranaga
• Journalist Ricardo Gabito alleged Larranaga was leaned on to alter report
• Just 11 days after Gabito's article, he was shot near home in Montevideo
  

By IAN GALLAGHER FOR THE MAIL ON SUNDAY IN MONTEVIDEO

Published: 19:13 EST, 28 June 2014 | Updated: 06:01 EST, 29 June 2014

Toothy grin: Luis Suarez smiles for the camera as he and classmates line up for a school photo in 1998

In his school uniform of white tunic and blue ribbon, Luis Suarez is a picture of youthful innocence as he smiles for a class photo.

Back in 1998, the World Cup outcast – banned for four months last week for sinking his teeth into Italian defender Giorgio Chiellini – was just another football-mad youngster who had yet to use his now-infamous incisors in anger.

And although he was known for his fiery temperament even at a relatively young age, there was no hint of what was to come.

‘He could be hot-tempered, but Luis never bit anyone,’ his former teacher Shirley Souto told The Mail on Sunday yesterday. ‘There was never any biting at school.’

Yesterday, Suarez, who was 11 at the time the school picture was taken, insisted that he had not meant to bite Chiellini.

But according to Uruguayan investigative journalist Ricardo Gabito, five years after posing for this photograph, Suarez was banned for 12 matches for his first recorded act of serious violence on a football pitch.

In an interview with The Mail on Sunday, Gabito told of a shocking incident in which the future Liverpool striker allegedly struck a referee, cutting his lip, during  a youth match in the Uruguayan capital Montevideo.

And more shocking still, the incident led to the shooting of Gabito, who exposed how a top football official tried to cover up the assault, apparently believing it could badly damage Suarez, then on the brink of a brilliant career. At the time, 16-year-old Suarez was on the books of Nacional, one of the city’s two top clubs.

In December 2003, in a crunch match against arch-rivals Danubio, he was booked for a bad tackle and shown a red card for arguing with referee Luis Larranaga.

Scroll down for video

Suarez has been banned from nine internationals and four months of all football for the bite (pictured)

It meant he would miss the championship-deciding last game of the season. According to Gabito and other witnesses, Suarez refused to leave the pitch – and lashed out.

The former youth coach at the club, Daniel Enriquez, said Suarez pushed and headbutted Larranaga, but Gabito insists he punched him.

Afterwards, Gabito says the man in charge of youth football  in Montevideo, Nelson Spillman, tried to pressurise Larranaga into changing his match report.

According to Gabito, the teenager was given a 12-match ban, though this cannot be independently verified. Gabito was alerted to the murky affair by an anonymous caller. He says he found the referee’s match report and contacted Larranaga, who confirmed the story about being threatened.

On December 12, 2003, Gabito’s article about the affair was published in his newspaper, La Republica. It didn’t name Suarez, but detailed the incident and Spillman’s alleged cover-up attempt.

Just 11 days later, Gabito was shot as he arrived home in the  La Blanqueada district of Montevideo. Spillman, his brother Daniel, who drove the getaway car used in the attack, and gunman, Juan Carlos Martinez were all later jailed over the incident. 

That's our man! Uruguay fans hold up and wear Luis Suarez masks at the Colombia v Uruguay match last night

But throughout the investigation and trial Suarez – who had no involvement with the shooting whatsoever or any knowledge of the threats from Spillman – was never named.

The disgraced striker claimed to Fifa’s disciplinary panel that  he did not deliberately bite Chiellini at the World Cup.

But the seven-man panel ruled that the bite was ‘deliberate, intentional and without provocation’.

He remained at his home with his family yesterday in the coastal resort of Solymar after receiving a hero’s welcome home. Even Uruguay’s president, Jose Mujica, turned up at the airport to greet him on Friday.

Uruguay has been in collective denial over the incident. Another of Suarez’s ex-teachers, Miriam Mendez, said: ‘He was a normal boy and never aggressive.’