Why Always Me? - The Biography of Mario Balotelli, City's Legendary Striker. Frank Worrall
not commented on the claims of the Barwuahs, Mario himself has issued an official statement on the matter, saying, ‘I had already asked my birth parents to respect my privacy, just as my family always has done, but they didn’t listen to me. I have no other recourse than to repeat what I said two years ago: if I hadn’t become the football star Mario Balotelli, they wouldn’t have cared what happened to me. My birth parents have said some incorrect and vague things which put my adoptive family in a bad light. This is something I cannot let pass, especially because my real family lives in Brescia – the family that has always loved and raised me. They are the only family who really know me as Mario. Perhaps in Brescia they don’t know that I stayed with my family uninterrupted for 16 years, the foster situation renewed every couple of years by the tribunal. Maybe they don’t know that I personally asked for adoption since the age of 13, but only managed to make it official in December 2008.’
While Mario may, as a youngster, have had struggled with identity problems and keeping his footing in an Italian society that was at the time bedevilled by racist attitude, he had no problem keeping his footing on the football pitch – or in the garden or the local park as he developed into a fine young player. His foster father Franco played a big part in his development – taking time out to drive Mario to football practice, football matches plus all the other activities Mario, as a busy boy who loved sport, liked to partake in. They included being in the Scouts, playing basketball, running with the local athletics club, swimming and martial arts. Mario particularly loved karate and judo and it is often said that he would maybe have gone down the road of choosing martial arts as an alternative career had football not proved his saving grace.
He may not have been the most academically gifted boy in the class, but he was certainly the best athlete and the best footballer. On his personal website, www.mariobalotelli.it, Mario outlines how much he owes to the Balotellis for their love, comfort and encouragement – and how he himself knew he had a talent at football, ‘Mario was born in Palermo on 12 August 1990, but has lived in Brescia with the Balotelli family since he was two. From the very start mum, dad, brothers Corrado and Giovanni, and sister Cristina (all much older than him) looked after little Mario with all the love of a parent, brother or sister. When he was just five Mario began playing football for the Mompiano parish team and was immediately grouped with the older boys because of his exceptional technical skills.’
Balotelli was on the road that would lead to superstardom – and to him becoming one of the world’s most famous footballers. But his foster mother Silvio was not convinced he was on the right track and urged him to spend more time on his studies…or even to consider becoming a basketball player! Giovanni Valenti, now youth team coach at AC Milan, told how he used to train Mario at Mompiano as a kid – and had to persuade Silvio that his future should be in football. Valenti said, ‘His mother was not keen on the idea of him having a career in football. When he started having trials at decent local clubs, she made him recite his multiplication tables, like usual, while all the other parents were taking in advice.
‘One time she even tried to stop him playing football and make him take up basketball. I jumped up and protested because that would have been a terrible waste. He was much better than his contemporaries – and still is.’
Even at the age of five, at Mompiano, he would also suffer racial discrimination as he played football. Mauro Tomolini, who ran the Mompiano team, said parents of other children tried to get him out of the team. Tomolini said, ‘When he came here aged five, he was the only black child out of 250. The parents of the others looked at him differently. People asked us to get him out of the team.’ Is it any wonder that Mario grew up defensive and suspicious of people and their motives - when he was verbally abused for the colour of his skin at such a young age?
It was disgraceful and a sad comment on Italian society at that time and the problem for Mario was that even in his late teens he would still suffer abuse from the terraces when he turned out for Inter Milan. In 2009 would come the worst of it – when he was first abused by Roma fans and then, on a much worse scale, by fans of Juventus. Balotelli had scored in the 1-1 draw at Juventus in April of that year, and the Guardian’s Paolo Bandini summed up the unacceptable nature of the chanting that day, ‘During the match the Internazionale striker Mario Balotelli had been subjected to a stream of racist taunts and chants. “If I had been in the stadium, after a certain point I would have left my seat in the stands, I would have gone down on to the pitch and taken my team out of the game,” said Internazionale’s president, Massimo Moratti.
‘Juventus can expect to receive a fine, though it is unlikely to put a significant dent in their finances. Roma were forced to pay just €8,000 (£7,100) when their fans directed similar abuse at Balotelli during their 3–3 draw in March, on condition that they took steps to prevent any repeat. The Juventus president, Giovanni Cobolli Gigli, has condemned the chanting and will doubtless hope to receive similar terms.
‘Balotelli, for his part, will feel that he answered the abuse in the best possible way. It was his team-mate Zlatan Ibrahimovic who once responded to the jeers of Juventus fans by insisting that “they will only make me stronger” but, while the Swede is yet to score against his former club, Balotelli’s strike on Saturday was his third in as many appearances against the Bianconeri.’
After the match, Mario stood proud against his abusers, merely saying, ‘I am more Italian than those Juventus fans in the stands.’
Later Mario would expand upon how he suffered as a child because he was black. He would say, ‘Two things were close to my heart as a boy. Like all boys of a certain age, I was interested in girls and getting attention. But it was like I was transparent [invisible]. I’m no George Clooney but I couldn’t explain why I was ignored. My friends in Italy explained. They told me people don’t like blacks.’
Juventus would eventually be forced to play one of their matches behind closed doors because of fans’ abuse of him and it would only be when he came to England that the catcalls would end – and that would be one of the key factors in his decision not to rush back to Italy at the end of his first season, when he was homesick for his family and friends. He knew he was in a fairer, more multicultural society in England than Italy and that decided it for him: he would stay put in Manchester.
Back in his childhood, his next move, aged eight or nine, on the road to the top was to San Bartolomeo, a youth team in a nearby town. Mario again made his mark, he was growing physically now and was not as easily knocked off the ball. And when he was pushed aside he would react angrily and push back: the first signs of the famous Balotelli temper were beginning to surface. It would become even more apparent when he reached the age of 11 and signed for the Italian Serie C outfit AC Lumezzane. Even at that tender age, Mario knew what he wanted and what he would accept – and what he would not accept. His first major brush with authority came when he told the club’s coach, Giovanni Valenti – the man who had been so influential in his development at Mompiano and who had now moved on to Lumezzane as youth coach – that he would not play under his surname of Barwuah.
Valenti said: ‘We had to make alterations on the team sheet and ask the stadium announcer not to call him Barwuah, but Balotelli. If he refused, we had to beg him to use just his first name. Otherwise, Mario wouldn’t play.’
And his team-mate Marco Pedretti added, ‘We used to fight in the dressing room. I threw him against a radiator once because he had hidden my clothes and I was stood there in my underpants like an idiot. I hadn’t seen him for a good while when he called me a few years ago from Inter Milan. It was his birthday and he asked me if I wanted to spend it with him. He never had many friends.’
In 2005, at the age of 15, Mario caught the eye of Lumezzane’s first team coach Walter Salvioni, who knew immediately that he had a raw diamond on his hands. Salvioni took Mario under his wing and into the Italian third division club’s senior squad. Salvioni said, ‘I was watching the juniors train and saw Mario on the pitch – after just five minutes I knew I had to have him in the first squad. He was incredible. His touch was fantastic. I went to the junior coach and said, “I’m taking that lad for the first team”. I didn’t know he was only 15 until the coach said, “You can’t, he’s too young”.’
The club’s