Luis Suarez start to life at Barcelona was hardly smooth after serving a ban for biting in his early months there following his transfer from Liverpool.
But his impact has become hugely important on and off the pitch. His goal in May put Barca ahead against Juventus in the Champions League final and he has been scoring regularly.
When he scored a hat-trick in the recent 3-1 win over Eibar, team-mate Neymar teased him (fondly one must add) with the name "Fatty" on his match ball, a moniker also used by some of his other colleagues.
It's all a sign of how embedded he is in the dressing room in his second season at the Nou Camp.
"This dig from Neymar and Messi cuts back to when Suarez came out of his ban, which is just over a year ago," said Off The Ball's European football correspondent Graham Hunter tonight, before explaining how the media picked up on his build at a time when he was not match-fit.
"What happened was the press kept saying, in their eyes, that he just looked slightly chunkier - nobody said 'fat' - but they asked if he was a carrying a kilo or two. Luis Enrique bit everyone's heads off for saying this. There was a fierce reaction from Barca about Suarez. But it's obviously a thing that his fellow players have never forgotten and won't leave alone and went after him for. I suppose these digs in Britain maybe don't come out until after a player's career is finished so fair play to them for being able to make it public and fair play to Suarez for allowing that to go public and not minding too much."
And as Graham concluded on Suarez's impact on the pitch: "It's rare to see such adaptability, intelligence and quality".
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