Manchester City play Napoli tonight in Naples' Stadio San Paolo, a stadium famed for its raucous and often hostile atmosphere. Even if City's black Italian striker Mario Balotelli were to score on his return to his native country, it's unlikely that he will deliver as memorable a moment as he did last week, when the Italian football team visited the presidential palace to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Italy's formation.
After shuffling up to shake Giorgio Napolitano's hand like an awkward schoolboy about to receive the headmaster's commendation, Balotelli welled up. No tears of a clown, these were the mixed emotions of pride and pain. Mario mumbled "grasie", in his thick Bergamasco accent.
Whether he knew it or not, Balotelli became a high representative for the 500,000 plus children born in Italy to foreign parents who are denied citizenship. Despite their strong regional accents and education in Italian schools, the law (n. 91, 5 February 1992) dictates that the children of foreigners can ask for citizenship if, at their 18th birthday, they prove they have lived legally in the country for 10 years. The message is clear: "You are not one of us."
Some 18 years after he was born in Palermo, Balotelli did just that. On 13 August 2008, he received his citizenship and identity card. Finally, he was officially Italian. Not that it made much of a difference. Since his Serie A debut for Inter, on 16 December 2007, Balotelli has been a focus for Italian racism. On international duty in 2009, he was insulted in a Roman bar and had bananas thrown at him. Questioned about the incident, the black, naturalised Italian long-jumper Andrew Howe rejected any racist motives: "I think black has nothing to do with it: if he had been Argentine, for example, they would have insulted him in another way."
After Juventus fans chanted "There are no black Italians", during Inter's visit to Turin on 19 April 2009, under-21 manager Pierluigi Casiraghi concurred with Howe: "It's his personality that's irritating, it's not racism … He has a big personality but sometimes exaggerates." The then coach for the Italian team, Marcello Lippi, also later asserted to 400 high-school students that "cases of racism in football don't exist in Italy".
More recently, Italian reaction to Sepp Blatter's latest gaffe has been muted. Actually, it's been non-existent. Does it prove that Italy has a major problem with race? No. It is probably more indicative of England's war with Blatter than anything else. Does Italy have a problem with race? Absolutely, and one needs to look no further than the average Italian for proof. As a friend's mother-in-law put it: "Sure, Mario's totally Italian, ma è nero da paura – but he's so black it's scary."
At the same time, the public debate around Balotelli might also have a constructive effect. Like all Italians who venture abroad, Balotelli's move to Manchester City has distanced him from the national consciousness. That he continues to be selected for the national team is evidence alone of his outstanding ability. And even if prone to the occasional cerebral short-circuit, Mario is far from the buffoon he is often portrayed as in Britain. An engaging, apparently modest, far from stupid individual, he might just be breaking the mould to become an icon of new Italy.
During Balotelli's visit to the presidential palace, Napolitano made specific reference to those half a million children born in Italy who remain foreigners in the eyes of the law, plus the almost one million foreign resident minors, of which 700,000 are educated in Italian schools but deprived of citizenship and thus of rights and recognition. In effect, he outlined Balotelli's life so far, and his future role to come. Following the recent years of ever-intensifying populist racism propagated by the Northern League, the president's words drew a clear line in the sand.
"I am convinced that the babies and children who have emigrated here are an integral part of the Italy of today and tomorrow and represent a great source of hope." His discourse was quite clear: you are one of us.
In a dramatic week for Italy, in which the president emerged from the shadows of what is often more of a figurehead role to become the nation's political lighthouse and moral compass, he also took time to identify a clear area of Italian life in desperate need of reform. As it attempts to raise the country from its knees, Mario Monti's administration of university professors and members of the Catholic establishment has no reason to ignore the logic of the president's argument, or be paralysed by the fear of losing consensus and the next election.
Italians, in the meantime, might also consider where their best interests lie: in the children of immigrant communities, made in Italy, committed to their country and who speak Roman, Venetian and Neapolitan dialect, or in a reactionary, populist racism trying to hold back both the tide and the wind of change.
Italy's leading black and second-generation athletes will play a significant role in this inevitable process of change. They will, however, need political support if they are to maximise their potential to hasten the country's passage through its multiracial growing pains. Without this, the road will be long. But in its challenge to reconcile fear and hope, needs and interests, in Balotelli, the first black player to score for Italy, the country has a wild card in the most positive sense.
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