The Curious Case of Mario Balotelli

I’ve read a lot of articles about the current and apparent ‘bad boy’ of football, Mario Balotelli, and I thought I’d add my tuppence worth. Hopefully, this is a different angle than has been considered.

I’ll start with a caveat, I don think Super Mario’s behaviour is becoming of a top level footballer and he seems to be far more trouble than he is worth. However, I think there is a problem in football with the way players with certain issues are treated.

In the late ‘80’s, we saw the rise of a flawed genius from Newcastle namely Paul Gascoigne.

Gazza was a brilliantly erratic player but one who found his most difficult opponent in his own head.
He was painted, by the media, though re-enforced by colleagues, as a clown. Indeed, his behaviour on and off the pitch would seem to confirm as much. But reading his autobiography, reveals a man who was quite clearly suffering from a mental disorder that was either undiagnosed or ignored.

As long as he was playing well, his foibles were ignored. It’s a largely unspoken truth in football that you can be forgiven for pretty much anything as long as you perform. The results driven agenda make it a true meritocracy but an amoral one.
This, in Gazza’s case, was merely masking a much larger problem. And, as has become apparent since his retirement, football was, as hard as it may seem, keeping him on straight and narrow. Sadly, his descent into a public laughing stock leaves football's reputation tarnished by association. Football is embarrassed by his behaviour and opts to bury its head in the sand rather than confront mental health issues.

For every Ryan Giggs, it seems, there is a Paul Gascoigne (or, more appropriately, Lee Sharpe). Young, gifted and then instantly rich and famous. All of this thrust upon them regardless of their capacity to deal with it.
And, likewise, for every Alex Ferguson, fastidiously controlling the hype, expectation and even the minutiae of the youngsters’ personal affairs, there are other managers and clubs who negligently overlook their responsibilities as, in a fashion, surrogate fathers in favour of milking as much as they can of such players without any consideration for their mental condition.

Which brings me back around to Mario Balotelli. His short career is littered with theatrical performances and these appear to have polarised opinion - from 'he's a complete tosser' to 'it's quite amusing'. However, we shouldn't caste him with either scorn or mirth (yet) as neither of these actually deals with the issue that is quite obvious: there is something wrong with him.

It has become de rigueur to vilify footballers for their earnings and easy life. We baulk when they suggest that they want to leave a club if they are unhappy, as if their contracts are written in blood yet very little attention is paid to players, like Balotelli, in understanding their mindset and how upheaval, lack of positive influences, education, intelligence, ability to adapt to new cultures, languages and scrutiny will affect them. They are, after all, human beings and susceptible to the same problems and vices as you or I. Their wealth does not buy them exemption from this.

Consider this, if Balotelli had a broken leg, we wouldn't criticise him for not being able to play but deep rooted, psychological problems are far harder to distinguish and their intangibility means they are rarely considered worthy of sympathy in this very masculine world but they are a real problem.

I only hope that football has progressed enough to not let what happened to Gazza, happen to Mario. Support groups exist for gambling, alcohol & drug addiction. These resonate with us because British society accepts these as issues while mental disorders are still stigmatised. To me, Balotelli is not a figure of ridicule or hate. He is someone that needs help.

He Goes By The Name of Wayne Rooney!

The ‘Wayne Rooney saga’ brought the issue of players wages to the fore again last week.

For a while now, it has been en vogue to chastise footballers for the perceived obscene amounts of money they earn for ‘kicking a ball about a field’ and the lavish lifestyle that this can provide them but, for me, the wages they earn are fair and just.

What a lot of people (generally outside the sport itself) fail to acknowledge is the value that a player like Rooney brings to a club. He’s not just kicking a ball around (though when he does, he does it better than most – more on that later) but he brings along massive sponsorship opportunities, keeps the turnstiles (or their modern equivalent) busy and helps to sell replica merchandise by the bucket-load.

So, when people criticise Manchester United for handing him a new contract, they have to realise that his extra-marital affairs don’t, nor should they, matter a jot – this is a business. An entertainment business and the simple fact is that Rooney is of Box Office proportions.

Unlike many modern day pseudo-heroes in the form of pop stars, models, TV presenters, influential columnists and, arguably, certain Hollywood film stars, Wayne Rooney has had to work extremely hard to get where he is today.
The notion that footballers have a natural borne talent is somewhat a fallacy – granted, many of them may well have a particular aptitude for the game but that aptitude alone is insufficient to play at the top level for any extended period of time.

In short, football is not something anyone can be good at but those who are, still work hard at it – the ones that don’t (and there has been a litany of them) simply do not survive.

Rarely does a footballer come out of re-hab for a drugs addiction and have a meaningful career a la pop stars or actors.
No; footballer’s indiscretions are always treated more severely than the indiscretions of others and I can’t help but feel that this is due to some deep-rooted bourgeoisie resentment against the working classes making something of their lives.

Consider this - because Hugh Grant speaks with his trademark ‘awfully, awfully’ eloquent clumsiness his affability is seen as endearing and his liaison with a hooker in a car is forgotten because, well, ‘he was quite funny in Love Actually’.

Rooney et al are tarred and feathered because they are not erudite and that, coupled with their wealth, is reason enough for the media and society to look down their noses at them.

It’s spurred on by the same people who would rather their precious son or daughter spent four years achieving a degree in some non-descript course which has all the hallmarks of an aspirational nothingness vocation – fashion studies maybe or event organising – than they left school and became a plumber.

These are two 'industries' that the world would comfortably survive without – in fact, it would probably improve the planet by about 10% if we obliterated both of them and the horrible, cosseted, convinced-their-job-actually-matters oiks that proliferate these two non-contributions to society!

I for one, would prefer to watch the raw genius of Wayne Rooney thumping the ball into the top corner of the Newcastle net with an unstoppable volley than endure the very best Ben Stiller has to offer – yet nobody complains that Ben is overpaid even though he earned a reputed $40million last year!

For me, while I don’t condone (though equally, remain pretty ambivalent to) the actions of many footballers, what really leaves a bitter taste in my mouth is the endless whining from the self-righteous columnists in newspapers and magazines who act as if these young men are the first to have committed these sins. These ‘journalists’ are the worst – they are nothing but parasites living from the drama, pain and controversy of celebrities and have the temerity to criticise every action yet fail to comprehend that their job is dependant on it.