Super Mario
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Former Republic of Ireland managaer Giovanni Trapattoni has urged Mario Balotelli to make the most of his seemingly imminent move to Liverpool.
The Italian, in his own inimitable way, compared the Italian striker to a “horse with uncontrollable desires” and warned that time is running out for him to make the most of his talent.
Balotelli is on the verge of a €20 million move to Liverpool from AC Milan. The 24-year-old is widely regarded as one of the most gifted strikers in the world but his temperament has been questioned after a number of high profile incidents on and off the pitch,
“A coach should never stop talking to those who have a sensitive soul. I did this until night time when my players went into their rooms. It was right way to deal with champions like (Michel) Platini, or (Zbigniew) Boniek.
“For a coach it is essential to manage the relationships within a group and with a man like Balotelli.”
Addressing Balotelli directly, Trapattoni added that his career will be short and he will soon be “old and forgotten” if he is not careful.
“Dear Mario, remember you are a horse with uncontrollable desires,” said Trapattoni. “You have class, enthusiasm and contractual power. Don’t spoil this moment of your life. A footballer’s career is short, and the right train might pass, one, two or three times. Not thousands.
“Then you suddenly find yourself old and forgotten. There is only one person who can help . . . Balotelli.”
Balotelli has reportedly agreed to a significant pay cut at Liverpool, with some reports suggesting it’s as much as 50 per cent. It is also understood there are behavioural clause in his new three-year Anfield deal, expected to be finalised in the coming in days.
http://www.irishtimes.com/sport/soc...lli-to-take-his-chance-at-liverpool-1.1906329
The Italian, in his own inimitable way, compared the Italian striker to a “horse with uncontrollable desires” and warned that time is running out for him to make the most of his talent.
Balotelli is on the verge of a €20 million move to Liverpool from AC Milan. The 24-year-old is widely regarded as one of the most gifted strikers in the world but his temperament has been questioned after a number of high profile incidents on and off the pitch,
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Balotelli will not be allowed disrupt Liverpool - Rodgers -
Balotelli poised to sign for Liverpool -
Brendan Rodgers to make call on Mario Balotelli after face-to-face meeting
“A coach should never stop talking to those who have a sensitive soul. I did this until night time when my players went into their rooms. It was right way to deal with champions like (Michel) Platini, or (Zbigniew) Boniek.
“For a coach it is essential to manage the relationships within a group and with a man like Balotelli.”
Addressing Balotelli directly, Trapattoni added that his career will be short and he will soon be “old and forgotten” if he is not careful.
“Dear Mario, remember you are a horse with uncontrollable desires,” said Trapattoni. “You have class, enthusiasm and contractual power. Don’t spoil this moment of your life. A footballer’s career is short, and the right train might pass, one, two or three times. Not thousands.
“Then you suddenly find yourself old and forgotten. There is only one person who can help . . . Balotelli.”
Balotelli has reportedly agreed to a significant pay cut at Liverpool, with some reports suggesting it’s as much as 50 per cent. It is also understood there are behavioural clause in his new three-year Anfield deal, expected to be finalised in the coming in days.
http://www.irishtimes.com/sport/soc...lli-to-take-his-chance-at-liverpool-1.1906329
I think we're getting him right at the right time ... It didn't work out at INter, or City, and not at his boyhood club either ... His agent and many around him are telling him, "take the chance or it's your last" ... It sounds like he'll be coming here motivated and with an even bigger chip on his shoulder ... With the right manager to manipulate that ... Here's hoping this isn't Sturridge MK II ... but Suarez MK II ...
GFFABL
It's actually the "Why always me?" attitude that bothers me most about him and about this deal, this idea on his part that he's just picked on. If he still has that attitude at the age of 23/24 it's going to be helluva difficult to shift, and if it isn't shifted he's not going to change.
Fingers and everything else crossable well and truly crossed.
Fingers and everything else crossable well and truly crossed.
Thats exactly the attitude Suarez has at 27 and it didnt stop him.
I don't agree with that summary of Suarez, but he's not our player any more, so I don't want to get into another argument about him.
Perhaps the "why always me" mentality came from Italy where, according to some, too much has been asked of him (off and on the field).
I don't think there are that many parallels between Balotelli and Suarez either.. other than the fact that both will have played for Liverpool and have had some disciplinary issues (though even those are different in nature).
Balotelli is mad off the pitch whereas Suarez seems to be a quiet family man. Suarez is mad on the pitch whereas Balotelli is simply a bit petulant.
I don't think there are that many parallels between Balotelli and Suarez either.. other than the fact that both will have played for Liverpool and have had some disciplinary issues (though even those are different in nature).
Balotelli is mad off the pitch whereas Suarez seems to be a quiet family man. Suarez is mad on the pitch whereas Balotelli is simply a bit petulant.
I've always thought Balotelli was just a bored rich kid with no family to keep him grounded.
He's married with a kid now isn't he? If so you'd hope that'd calm him down off the pitch.
He's married with a kid now isn't he? If so you'd hope that'd calm him down off the pitch.
What? You dont think Suarez blamed the world!? Seriously!!
Fans, press, media all against our Luis.
He's said such things, sure, but (apart from the Evra fiasco, and let's not get into the whys and wherefores of that again) he's changed his tune and accepted responsibility subsequently. He may well have been advised to do so, but I don't think that matters. FWIW my guess would be that Balotelli is actually the brighter of the two, but that that makes him less biddable, which is part of my concern.
I hope not, we usually try some element of originality, hopefully that continues.
I think most footballers in general are egomaniacal wankers who think the world is to blame for anything that goes wrong in their lives and that really they are accountable to no one.
I would imagine most men in general with low education who have been pandered to and fawned over since they were in their early teens and by the age of 20 never have to worry about a thing again ever would be the same, althou some may be better at handling it.
I would imagine most men in general with low education who have been pandered to and fawned over since they were in their early teens and by the age of 20 never have to worry about a thing again ever would be the same, althou some may be better at handling it.
Im sure some of Mario's poorer decision making can be moderated with influence from Dr Peters, the manager and the captain.
I don't think we should lose sight of the positive influence he can bring to the team on the pitch. I think we can relax a little especially as his fee isn't enormous and he won't be expected to carry any burden beyond playing to the best of his ability.
I'm much more inclined to let the opposition worry about Mario. As I said before he, Sturridge and Sterling is a pretty fearsome line up for any defence to keep quiet.
I don't think we should lose sight of the positive influence he can bring to the team on the pitch. I think we can relax a little especially as his fee isn't enormous and he won't be expected to carry any burden beyond playing to the best of his ability.
I'm much more inclined to let the opposition worry about Mario. As I said before he, Sturridge and Sterling is a pretty fearsome line up for any defence to keep quiet.
No surprise that Liverpool found Mario Balotelli was going for a song
Mario Balotelli has talent but Liverpool will have to work at making the pros outweigh the cons on his return to the Premier League
No one doubts the talent of Mario Balotelli but his previous clubs have not been sorry to see him leave. Photograph: Mike Egerton/PA It goes back a few years now, but you might remember the old television commercial for Allied Dunbar that Jamie Carragher mentioned the other day, with its version of Irving Berlin’s Let’s Face the Music and Dance and the little scene that unfolds when a man is shaving in the bathroom mirror and finds a pregnancy test at the back of the medicine cabinet. The man is still covered in foam as he marches downstairs to confront his daughters, and that is the point when his wife intervenes. “I think we’re the ones who should have been more careful,” she says. Then the music starts: “There may be trouble ahead …” This was Carragher’s response to the news that Liverpool had decided the good did outweigh the bad when it came to Mario Balotelli and that he was worth a punt. It was a decent price, he said, but he couldn’t help think back to that advert: a settled family taking in the news that a new arrival was on the way and trying to be happy despite that nagging sense that, yes, it might change their lives for their better, but it would also need an awful lot of energy. Balotelli cost Manchester City £22.5m when he signed from Internazionale in 2010. He was sold to Milan for £19m and his transfer value is now £16m. Liverpool would like to think they have got themselves a steal, and maybe they have when Shane Long has gone from Hull City to Southampton for £12m and Fulham somehow thought Leeds United’s Ross McCormack was worth £11m. Another way of looking at it, however, is that footballers’ transfer fees do not generally depreciate if their careers are on the rise. At this stage of his career, Balotelli should be a £50m player, maybe even higher. Instead, there is always that sense of someone who has stayed too young too long.
The comedian Jean Kittson once asked: “What’s the use of having a totally gorgeous body like Victoria Principal if you’ve got a mind like Victoria Principal?” And the same type of question applies to Balotelli. What’s the use being that talented if there is something, north of his feet, that means it comes out only in sporadic flashes in between all the not-so-good stuff? Liverpool will learn very quickly they have to spend an inordinate amount of time on him. They will like to think, age-wise, he is capable of better life choices at 24 than when he was 20 but for their own sake they should probably know the best policy with Balotelli is always to keep an open mind. It would be wrong to assume he will foul up but, equally, it won’t be easy for Brendan Rodgers, or indeed Liverpool’s psychiatrist Dr Steve Peters, bearing in mind the number of managers, team-mates, advisers and relatives who have tried to knock some sense into Balotelli and ended up wanting to drop a flowerpot on his head. He will always let you down at some point or another. The secret is trying to bring out the good bits the rest of the time. Gazzetta dello Sport has just calculated that in 568 days at Milan he made them 788 different headlines. Mario Sconcerti, writing in Corriere della Sera, neatly summed up the Balotelli phenomenon as “the strange talent of making everyone happy when he arrives and even happier when he leaves”.
Balotelli might prove to be a bargain when he is only the fourth most expensive signing at Liverpool this summer, behind Adam Lallana, Dejan Lovren and Lazar Markovic. Yet there must be a reason why Christian Vieri says this is possibly the best piece of business in Milan’s history. Sconcerti was right: there are champagne corks when Balotelli signs, but they neck the whole bottle when he is gone. Liverpool have been sensible to stipulate there are behaviour clauses in his contract (even if this is fairly standard practice) but they will discover there is plenty to like about Balotelli as well. Roberto Mancini, his former manager at City, used to describe him as crazy and flick his fingers beneath his own chin, in that Italian way, but only because he cared about his player. Pablo Zabaleta would shake his head and wonder if “his brain is gone, absolutely” but again it was fondness, mostly, in his voice. Even José Mourinho, whose relationship with Balotelli at Inter often drifted between cold and Arctic, seems to remember the player he once described as “unmanageable” with a degree of affection. Mourinho reckons his book of Balotelli anecdotes would stretch to 200 pages and the one he likes to tell the most is a belter. “We went to play Rubin Kazan in the Champions League. All my other strikers were injured. No Diego Milito, no Samuel Eto’o. I was really in trouble. Mario got a yellow card in the 42nd minute and when I got into the dressing room at half-time I spent 14 minutes of the 15 available speaking to Mario. I said to him: ‘Mario, I can’t change you, I have no strikers on the bench, don’t touch anybody and play only the ball. Mario, if someone provokes you, don’t react. If we lose the ball, no reaction. If the referee makes a mistake, no reaction.” A pause. “The 46th minute: red card.” This, fundamentally, is the issue with Luis Suárez’s replacement and it is the same question that used to be asked of his predecessor but in a different context: can he be trusted? Before everything went sour at City, Mancini was convinced greatness had been thrust on Balotelli. The problem, I always felt, was that Balotelli must have ducked out of the way.
A small thing, perhaps, but Google “Balotelli training hard” to find the old YouTube clip of the Milan squad running around the side of a pitch at their training ground. One by one, they have to jog through cones then jump over a series of low hurdles. It is nothing too strenuous – the hurdles are barely six inches off the ground – but Balotelli is having one of his W-for-whatever days. He moves in between the cones, sees what is coming and, accidentally on purpose, misses out the jumps, nonchalantly jogging past while his team-mates complete the exercise. It’s 15 seconds of classic Mario. At City, the coaches recall how they would give him DVDs to swot up on the opposition then realise he was watching Laurel and Hardy movies instead. They remember him being fascinated with the sliding doors at their training ground and driving slowly towards the entrance in his camouflage sports car, mounting the kerb to see how close he could get before the glass swung open. We all know about the scraps, the crashes, the pranks. Everyone remembers him chucking darts from a window at the youth-team players or what happened the night before the Manchester derby when he and his gang started letting off fireworks from the bathroom window (though don’t forget he scored a peach the following day).
No one, however, will recall too many games when he lived up to Mancini’s prediction that if Balotelli could stop jumbling his priorities he would be as good as Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi. Suárez, for all his behavioural flaws, would give every drop of sweat to that Liverpool shirt. Don’t presume the same will come from his successor. This is a guy who was out with a shoulder injury for Milan recently and posted a photograph of himself on Instagram playing table tennis. Only Balotelli could excuse himself from a game with flu – Milan’s friendly against Valencia last Sunday – then take part in a charity ice-bucket challenge the following day and not understand how it looked. A part of him, I suspect, will always be that overgrown kid, new to England, who went to John Lewis one afternoon to get an ironing board and came back with a quad bike, a trampoline and a giant Scalextric. It is both his charm and his weakness. The good does outweigh the bad, it’s just a close-run thing sometimes and Liverpool, as Carragher implied, should bear in mind it could involve some sleepless nights.
Mario Balotelli has talent but Liverpool will have to work at making the pros outweigh the cons on his return to the Premier League
No one doubts the talent of Mario Balotelli but his previous clubs have not been sorry to see him leave. Photograph: Mike Egerton/PA It goes back a few years now, but you might remember the old television commercial for Allied Dunbar that Jamie Carragher mentioned the other day, with its version of Irving Berlin’s Let’s Face the Music and Dance and the little scene that unfolds when a man is shaving in the bathroom mirror and finds a pregnancy test at the back of the medicine cabinet. The man is still covered in foam as he marches downstairs to confront his daughters, and that is the point when his wife intervenes. “I think we’re the ones who should have been more careful,” she says. Then the music starts: “There may be trouble ahead …” This was Carragher’s response to the news that Liverpool had decided the good did outweigh the bad when it came to Mario Balotelli and that he was worth a punt. It was a decent price, he said, but he couldn’t help think back to that advert: a settled family taking in the news that a new arrival was on the way and trying to be happy despite that nagging sense that, yes, it might change their lives for their better, but it would also need an awful lot of energy. Balotelli cost Manchester City £22.5m when he signed from Internazionale in 2010. He was sold to Milan for £19m and his transfer value is now £16m. Liverpool would like to think they have got themselves a steal, and maybe they have when Shane Long has gone from Hull City to Southampton for £12m and Fulham somehow thought Leeds United’s Ross McCormack was worth £11m. Another way of looking at it, however, is that footballers’ transfer fees do not generally depreciate if their careers are on the rise. At this stage of his career, Balotelli should be a £50m player, maybe even higher. Instead, there is always that sense of someone who has stayed too young too long.
The comedian Jean Kittson once asked: “What’s the use of having a totally gorgeous body like Victoria Principal if you’ve got a mind like Victoria Principal?” And the same type of question applies to Balotelli. What’s the use being that talented if there is something, north of his feet, that means it comes out only in sporadic flashes in between all the not-so-good stuff? Liverpool will learn very quickly they have to spend an inordinate amount of time on him. They will like to think, age-wise, he is capable of better life choices at 24 than when he was 20 but for their own sake they should probably know the best policy with Balotelli is always to keep an open mind. It would be wrong to assume he will foul up but, equally, it won’t be easy for Brendan Rodgers, or indeed Liverpool’s psychiatrist Dr Steve Peters, bearing in mind the number of managers, team-mates, advisers and relatives who have tried to knock some sense into Balotelli and ended up wanting to drop a flowerpot on his head. He will always let you down at some point or another. The secret is trying to bring out the good bits the rest of the time. Gazzetta dello Sport has just calculated that in 568 days at Milan he made them 788 different headlines. Mario Sconcerti, writing in Corriere della Sera, neatly summed up the Balotelli phenomenon as “the strange talent of making everyone happy when he arrives and even happier when he leaves”.
Balotelli might prove to be a bargain when he is only the fourth most expensive signing at Liverpool this summer, behind Adam Lallana, Dejan Lovren and Lazar Markovic. Yet there must be a reason why Christian Vieri says this is possibly the best piece of business in Milan’s history. Sconcerti was right: there are champagne corks when Balotelli signs, but they neck the whole bottle when he is gone. Liverpool have been sensible to stipulate there are behaviour clauses in his contract (even if this is fairly standard practice) but they will discover there is plenty to like about Balotelli as well. Roberto Mancini, his former manager at City, used to describe him as crazy and flick his fingers beneath his own chin, in that Italian way, but only because he cared about his player. Pablo Zabaleta would shake his head and wonder if “his brain is gone, absolutely” but again it was fondness, mostly, in his voice. Even José Mourinho, whose relationship with Balotelli at Inter often drifted between cold and Arctic, seems to remember the player he once described as “unmanageable” with a degree of affection. Mourinho reckons his book of Balotelli anecdotes would stretch to 200 pages and the one he likes to tell the most is a belter. “We went to play Rubin Kazan in the Champions League. All my other strikers were injured. No Diego Milito, no Samuel Eto’o. I was really in trouble. Mario got a yellow card in the 42nd minute and when I got into the dressing room at half-time I spent 14 minutes of the 15 available speaking to Mario. I said to him: ‘Mario, I can’t change you, I have no strikers on the bench, don’t touch anybody and play only the ball. Mario, if someone provokes you, don’t react. If we lose the ball, no reaction. If the referee makes a mistake, no reaction.” A pause. “The 46th minute: red card.” This, fundamentally, is the issue with Luis Suárez’s replacement and it is the same question that used to be asked of his predecessor but in a different context: can he be trusted? Before everything went sour at City, Mancini was convinced greatness had been thrust on Balotelli. The problem, I always felt, was that Balotelli must have ducked out of the way.
A small thing, perhaps, but Google “Balotelli training hard” to find the old YouTube clip of the Milan squad running around the side of a pitch at their training ground. One by one, they have to jog through cones then jump over a series of low hurdles. It is nothing too strenuous – the hurdles are barely six inches off the ground – but Balotelli is having one of his W-for-whatever days. He moves in between the cones, sees what is coming and, accidentally on purpose, misses out the jumps, nonchalantly jogging past while his team-mates complete the exercise. It’s 15 seconds of classic Mario. At City, the coaches recall how they would give him DVDs to swot up on the opposition then realise he was watching Laurel and Hardy movies instead. They remember him being fascinated with the sliding doors at their training ground and driving slowly towards the entrance in his camouflage sports car, mounting the kerb to see how close he could get before the glass swung open. We all know about the scraps, the crashes, the pranks. Everyone remembers him chucking darts from a window at the youth-team players or what happened the night before the Manchester derby when he and his gang started letting off fireworks from the bathroom window (though don’t forget he scored a peach the following day).
No one, however, will recall too many games when he lived up to Mancini’s prediction that if Balotelli could stop jumbling his priorities he would be as good as Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi. Suárez, for all his behavioural flaws, would give every drop of sweat to that Liverpool shirt. Don’t presume the same will come from his successor. This is a guy who was out with a shoulder injury for Milan recently and posted a photograph of himself on Instagram playing table tennis. Only Balotelli could excuse himself from a game with flu – Milan’s friendly against Valencia last Sunday – then take part in a charity ice-bucket challenge the following day and not understand how it looked. A part of him, I suspect, will always be that overgrown kid, new to England, who went to John Lewis one afternoon to get an ironing board and came back with a quad bike, a trampoline and a giant Scalextric. It is both his charm and his weakness. The good does outweigh the bad, it’s just a close-run thing sometimes and Liverpool, as Carragher implied, should bear in mind it could involve some sleepless nights.
Don't know if it's been mentioned, so apologies if I'm quiffing. Apparently the deal, or rather, the clause, equates to him gaining £2m if he keeps his nose clean, or losing £2m off his contract if he doesn't, over the course of his deal. If he loses £2m off his deal he's basically missed out on £4m.
He needs to train hard. Nothing else bothers me much if he does that, because I think quite an improvement in other aspects of his behaviour will follow, but he's got to train really seriously. Rodgers' team requires players who are really fit, really tactically alert and really committed. Much of the media moaning is about trivial stuff. This is what his signing for us will hinge on. He's got to put in the work (and the thought).
I think the club has been pretty smart with regards to handling this "clause", as they've packaged it as a performance bonus that is not dissimilar to any other player. Which is good because there is always the risk of Balotelli turning his back on a deal that outrightly demands good behaviour.
I must say his agent has been singing the right tune throughout this entire deal. He's either an angel of an agent that has his client's best interest at heart or there's something else that had happened in Milan that we're not privy to.
Yeah, I was saying this to someone last night. His interview was brutally honest, given he's talking about the multi million pound talent he represents. It was refreshing.
Or he's saying what he's saying because his income will drop dramatically if Balotelli screws this up and nobody else will touch him afterwards.
I don't know. Telling the whole world this is his last chance and he better not mess it up doesn't seem to be a very good way of positioning his client for his next transfer, especially if he does screw up.
Indeed, so he wouldn't be saying it unless he thought he really had to, i.e.there's no other way of getting through to the guy. IMO it follows that he *does* think that. I hope it works, whether or not we actually sign him.
I think he's engaged. Not sure if he has a child, but I don't think so.
Unless this wee one counts..?
To the tune of Agadoo
Ma Ri O O O
Kicks the ball and scores a goal
Ma Ri O O O
Can't believe you cost fuck all
First attempt - Don't worry I've got plenty more.
*prepares self for imminent artistic abuse* 😛
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