Luis Suarez talks of his pride in reaching 500 goal milestone

Madrid, Mar 22 (efe-epa).- Atletico Madrid forward Luis Suarez said he was feeling “proud” after notching his 500th career goal, which clinched the win against Alaves in La Liga over the weekend.

 “One must feel proud on a personal level reaching this tally of goals,” the Uruguayan told Atletico Madrid’s in-house media.

Reaching 500 goals is “a difficult and important” milestone, Suarez said, celebrating that his latest goal helped Atletico to pocket three precious points to maintain the gap at the top of La Liga.

“It served to help the team, which is very nice, it is very important,” he added.

He scored the sole goal in the second half of the Alaves game, a tally that Atletico managed to hold thanks to goalkeeper Jan Oblak, who saved a late penalty.

The league win came after “a tough moment” for the Madrid team, which was knocked out of the Champions League last week at the hands of Chelsea.

 “Being eliminated from the Champions is always painful, it is hard to get over it and we were aware of that. It was a key match, we had to win it,” he said.

This was Suarez’s 19th goal in the 31 games he has played for Atletico since he joined from Barcelona, where he scored 198 goals to become the Catalan club’s third top scorer of all time.

The 34-year-old has to his name 111 goals with Ajax, 82 at Liverpool, 15 for Groningen and 12 with Nacional Montevideo, where he made his first-team debut in May 2005.

Suarez is the Uruguayan national team’s all-time top scorer with 63 goals. EFE-EPA