Luis Suarez was officially announced as "100 percent a Barca player" by Andoni Zubizarreta (h/t BBC Sport) on July 16, 2014.
It would, of course, be almost three and a half months later before he was able to don the Blaugrana for the first time in competitive action.
Was it worth the wait? Prior to that debut against Real Madrid at the Santiago Bernabeu at the back end of October, only the staff at La Masia had the pleasure of seeing Suarez out on the football pitch. An U19 Indonesian XI were invited to give Suarez and Thomas Vermaelen some much needed match practice and both were on target in a win that merely informed the public—via reports such as Pete Jenson's in the Daily Mail—just how overweight Suarez was at the time.
To many it was inconceivable that he would shed enough pounds to make his fighting weight come the big day. But shed he did, and his impact was almost instant with an assist to Neymar after just three minutes of his debut.
His 69-minute cameo was far from the disaster that many had predicted, despite the final result. It was a satisfactory start to life at Barca and Johan Cruyff's summer assertion in his De Telegraaf column (via ESPN) had already started to sound a little hollow:
Source http://bleacherreport.com/articles/2324310-complete-analysis-of-luis-suarezs-first-6-months-at-barcelona
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