Seeing Mario Balotelli on the touchline in the Champions League final was a throwback to when he was doing hell at Manchester City. The same smoking presence. The same sartorial elegance. The same feeling that he really would rather be somewhere else. Predicted score, Mario, for the BT Sport team that pays you very well? “No comment,” he replied.
He became an absurd figure on these shores in the end; a cartoon character who revealed this T-shirt, “Why always me?”, while scoring two goals in Manchester United’s 6-1 thrashing at Old Trafford in October 2011.
How we laughed at that gesture at the time, but wasn’t there something rather tragic about the lack of self-respect?
No one has ever really answered this question posed by Balotelli or unlocked the mysteries of his inner mind – certainly not Roberto Mancini, so hated by his own players towards the end that there wasn’t a single positive word to be found. when City showed him the door. . Balotelli’s career tracks – nine moves in as many years after City – tell his own story of what happened next.
These clubs all assumed they would unlock the genius that Balotelli’s football sometimes alludes to – altering his body shape to glide a ball, the first time, past Jonny Evans, and score that first goal against United – but it was always out of reach. .
Mario Balotelli was part of BT Sport’s coverage as Man City won the Champions League final
His presence was a throwback to when he raised hell playing for Man City
Pep Guardiola is more likely than anyone to have been the right person to keep Balotelli on track and locate consistent shine beyond all the craziness around the Italian.
Amid the craziness and attention-seeking – the fireworks shot in his bathroom, the dart fired at a young team player – there were occasional hints of another Balotelli, struggling to to go out.
I remember finding out that he had quietly become a regular visitor to a shelter, the Booth Centre, next to Manchester Cathedral, which helps hundreds of the city’s homeless every year.
When the cathedral staff were hosting a sponsored party to raise money for the venue, I asked if Balotelli would be willing to offer some quotes and a private photo, to distribute to the media in support of the company. Word came back that bringing her there for something staged would be impossible; he only operated on short notice.
He looked very out of place on that Saturday night TV panel. When City had won the final and he drifted onto the pitch, witnessing a glory he had never found in club football, perhaps a bit of Balotelli, 32, reflected to what might have been had he been under the supervision of Pep Guardiola at City.
A ridiculous notion, many would say, due to Guardiola’s utter intolerance of anyone wasting his time – Joao Cancelo being one example. However, intolerance is not the same as indifference.
Jack Grealish doesn’t seem more of a Guardiola type than Balotelli, but the manager has invested valuable time getting to know him and understanding what could help him improve. A river of words has flowed since City’s triumph on the shores of the Bosphorus, but none are more powerful than Grealish’s tearful tribute, just after the final whistle, to Guardiola. “He put so much faith in me,” Grealish said. “Even when I sucked.”
Guardiola will accept weaknesses and indiscretions if a player is obsessed with the game and that’s the impression Balotelli left on me after about an hour in the company of one of the few people who really knew him: his adoptive mother. .
I saw her for the last time on a Sunday morning in the winter of 2009; a tiny, formidable woman, Silvia, who climbed into the ridiculously huge minivan that was set up to take her from Manchester’s Deansgate – Mario’s final resting place at the time – to the airport.
Roberto Mancini (right) struggled to unlock the genius Balotelli sometimes alluded to
Jack Grealish doesn’t seem more of a Guardiola type than Balotelli but the Spaniard has made the most of the England international after a difficult first season at the Etihad.
Guardiola’s side beat Inter Milan in the Champions League final to complete the treble
It had been one of her periodic trips, limited by her husband’s poor health, to be with him, and she had wanted to see Manchester Cathedral, where my own son had not long been installed as a choirboy. As she walked through the cloisters, she spoke of the young people who above all need individuals who would give them precious time.
That seemed to be the way she saw him, really, a displaced boy, away from home sooner than she had hoped. But he had this football obsession and that was it. The family pinned their hopes on Mancini giving Balotelli some of their precious time, although beyond some public pronouncements that he would become one of the top five players in the world, the manager just seemed to be waiting and hoping for the best. The player’s agent, the late Mino Raiola, who put the fear of God in some members of Balotelli’s family, seemed to have a far greater influence in his life.
There were a few other hints of this potential on the ground. The pass that set up Sergio Aguero for the 2011-12 title-winning goal. And then he was gone.
A relationship of the kind Grealish formed with Guardiola forces a player to give as well as take. “To understand it, you don’t even need to know too much about football. It’s more a question of curiosity, a willingness to accept an unconventional spirit,” explains Marti Perarnau, writer and friend of Guardiola.
It could have been beyond Balotelli, although if any manager had the ability to locate consistent brilliance beneath the madness then it would have been him.
