"The best nine of all time." That's Luis Suarez's verdict on Ronaldo Nazario, posted alongside a photo of the pair together — two of the most predatory strikers in football history, standing side by side.
It's a take that'll spark arguments, but it's hard to dismiss coming from a man who has scored over 600 professional goals himself. Suarez knows what elite finishing looks like from the inside.
A week of reunions for El Pistolero
The Ronaldo meeting wasn't the only notable encounter. A few days earlier, Suarez shared a moment with England captain Harry Kane on the margins of the ongoing FIFA World Cup 2026 — the two No. 9s swapping jerseys and posing for a picture. "With a great 9! A pleasure to meet you," Suarez wrote.
There's something quietly poetic about that exchange. Kane is very much in his prime, chasing records with Bayern Munich. Suarez, at 38, is winding down at Inter Miami. Two of the generation's most clinical forwards, briefly in the same frame.
Suarez's career doesn't need embellishment — the facts are enough. Ajax, where he captained the club and announced himself to Europe. Liverpool, where his 2013-14 season was arguably the finest individual striker campaign the Premier League has seen in the last two decades — Golden Boot, PFA Players' Player of the Year, 31 league goals in 33 games. Then Barcelona, where he, Messi, and Neymar formed the MSN, won the Champions League, and Suarez took the European Golden Shoe in 2015-16.
Still sharp enough to hold a conversation with the elite
He finished his European chapter at Atletico Madrid, where he was the difference-maker in their 2020-21 La Liga title — scoring 21 goals, many of them decisive. That kind of output at that stage of a career is rare.
At international level, he's Uruguay's all-time top scorer. The controversies are part of the record too — no sanitising them — but so is the volume of goals, the movement, the relentless will to be involved.
Now he's in MLS, reconnecting with old teammates at Inter Miami, meeting legends, swapping shirts with the next generation. Whatever you think of his choices on a pitch over the years, the man has earned the right to call Ronaldo Nazario the best nine ever — and have people actually listen.
