A parting shot to racism in Italian football would be Mario’s greatest legacy
FEW who have followed Mario Balotelli’s career will have been surprised to hear reports that Brescia have ripped up his contract.
For years he’d not so much been drinking in the last chance saloon as rollerblading through it with a parrot on his head, chucking fireworks at the bar staff.
The likes of Noel Gallagher hailed him a maverick genius but, the odd flash of brilliance apart, football for Balotelli always appeared to be a joyless distraction from snuffing out baddies on an Xbox.
Yet last summer when he signed for his hometown club, saying, “Here, I have everything I need”, many hoped the 29-year-old striker would finally buckle down and realise his huge potential. It didn’t happen. This season, he’s had more yellow cards than he’s scored goals, drawn harsh criticism over his attitude and has now had his contract terminated for going AWOL from training. It seems likely that this teenage prodigy, who made Time magazine’s cover as Italy’s first black footballing superstar, will drift to the USA or China, slipping out of the game’s top level with an embarrassing whimper.
Unless, that is, Balotelli (below, being denied entry to Brescia’s training ground) hears what Raheem Sterling has been saying about race this week, grasps the global watershed moment and does a supercharged attack on the endemic racism in Italian football. If so, his legacy could be completely different.
It would only be the culmination of what he has been bravely attempting all year. He called out the poison at his initial Brescia press conference, saying: “I hope to find a different league and not experience new episodes of racism.” His hope was in vain.
He was so abused at Verona in November that he kicked the ball into the stands and tried to walk off the pitch in tears, only to be prevented
by his team-mates. The racist fans were disgracefully defended by Verona’s owner and coach, and an Ultra told a radio station that Balotelli “will never be completely Italian”.
His own fans even labelled Balotelli “arrogant” and his chairman Massimo Cellino said: “He’s black and he’s working to whiten himself, but he has great difficulties in this.”
Balotelli’s response at the time was as eloquent as it was prescient: “You are getting into social and historical situations that are bigger than you. Wake up, you imbeciles.” They didn’t.
In January, a referee again stopped a game in which he was racially abused by Lazio fans. Balotelli wrote “SHAME ON YOU” on Instagram. The biggest shame was that Lazio were fined a paltry £16,500.
It followed other incidents this season in which Inter Milan Ultras shrugged off monkey grunts against their own player Romalu Lukaku as “a form of respect” and an Italian TV pundit said the only way to stop Lukaku was to “give him 10 bananas”.
Antonio Conte noted in September that the racism in Italian football had got “worse and worse” and a “zerotolerance” policy was needed. It’s the apparent denial of its existence at every level that is most alarming.
Sterling pointed out this week that English football appears to block black people from power, but in Italy it seems many in power openly mock them.
Not everyone, though. After Verona’s dismissal of their fans’ abuse of Balotelli, Roma tweeted from their official account: “Whether it’s 20 people or 2,000, racist abuse is never acceptable.
“It’s time to choose a side: those prepared to stand up to racism and those who will allow it to destroy this game we all love.”
As protesters take to Italy’s streets to show solidarity with George Floyd, Italian football needs to ask itself, as English football is doing, whether Black Players’ Lives Matter.
Balotelli could play a pivotal role by holding a farewell press conference and unleashing a withering assessment of the cowardice and hypocrisy of the game’s power-brokers.
Unveiling a T-shirt with “Why Always Us?” on it would be his finest moment.