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When was he suspended?FantasyIreland said:
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Balotelli (continued)
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FantasyIreland
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SWP's back said:When was he suspended?FantasyIreland said:SuperMario's Fireworks. said:i do feel he is the only striker in our side who hasnt had a consistent run this season, i remember he played against wigan, scored his first goal and then was dropped a game later.
Injuries,suspensions and dickheaditis haven't helped.
Not recently obviously.
Dan Taylor reckons Mancini's public line is all for show and that the club wants rid of Mario.
-
There is a good reason why over the coming days and weeks you may hear Roberto Mancini maintaining the public line that Manchester City don't want to sell Mario Balotelli and will happily stick by him no matter how many times he brings the club and himself into disrepute.
The truth is something different. It is just that Mancini is schooled in football politics and understands very well that the first rule of selling is to have a strategy. Admitting that Balotelli is for sale would drive down his price. So a different version is offered for the cameras when, privately, City are already down to the nitty-gritty of talking about how much money they can get and who may possibly want him.
It is a sorry sequence of events, as it always is, when an uncommon talent has strayed dangerously close to the point of wastage. Maddening, too, when attempting to quantify the amount of time and energy Mancini has personally devoted into trying to rewire Balotelli from a full-time problem into the perfectly assembled footballer. Mancini can be as clinical as they come – "the hardest bastard you will ever meet," to revisit a quote from one associate – but it must have been difficult for him to reach this point. Even on Thursday, over lunch at San Carlo Cicchetti, his favourite Manchester restaurant, the journalists in his company were struck by his affection for the player. It is not a decision City have made lightly.
They cannot be blamed, though, and, after all this time, who seriously can accuse them of lacking tolerance now the club have concluded that moving out Balotelli at the end of the season and targeting someone of the calibre of Edinson Cavani or Radamel Falcao would deliver more goals and less hassle?
Mancini used to say that if Balotelli could get his head right he would be up there with Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi. For what it's worth, he still thinks it's possible. Yet the statement looks preposterous sometimes. Messi's total of 91 goals throughout 2012 compares with 13 for Balotelli and confirmation of his place as fourth-choice striker at City. A drought for Ronaldo, with 174 in 172 games for Real Madrid, amounts to two, possibly three matches. Balotelli has managed one goal in the Premier League this season, a penalty in the Champions League and one in the Capital One Cup.
As for gauging their value in other ways – their temperament, the ability to shape matches and an understanding of the will and dedication that is involved – maybe the best way to put it is that while the great and good congregated for the Ballon d'Or awards in Zurich, City's fourth-choice striker was turning out, over-age, for their under-21s at Platt Lane, their old training ground.
Fifa never did justify Balotelli's inclusion on the voting papers before the original list was whittled down, though, believe it or not, three national team captains – Christian Fuchs of Austria, Vixay Phaphouvaninh of Laos and Palestine's Attal Fahed – actually put a tick by his name to finish in third place. Fuchs and Fahed put him in at the expense of Ronaldo. Fuchs decided Balotelli had done more for football last year than Messi. There are some things that are just beyond explanation.
Psychoanalysing Balotelli is not an easy thing either. To date, there has been one newspaper interview in England and its origins are another pointer into his unorthodox way of operating. Balotelli was dining in one of Manchester's Italian restaurants when he noticed the man at a nearby table had a laptop bag stuffed with newspapers. "I bet you're a journalist," he said. So pleased to get it right, Balotelli followed it up by telling the reporter it was his lucky day. On went the tape. His sister, Cristina, is a journalist, based in London and working for the Financial Times, and the family have been happy to spend time with others in the profession. One of this correspondent's more unusual assignments was a request from Balotelli's mother, the diminutive Silvia, to show her round Manchester Cathedral, just down the road from the glass apartment at the heart of the shopping district where her son first lived when he arrived in the city. Over coffee, Silvia told the story of how she and her husband, Franco, a retired warehouse supervisor, had thought their fostering days were behind them, with three grown-up children of their own, until the local authority rang and said they had an abandoned two-year-old who had been in and out of hospital and needed a home. It was Silvia in later years who gave that boy the gold medallion he wears over his shirt. It bears the inscription: "Professionalism, Endeavour, Humility". A shame, perhaps, he does not apply those qualities more often.
Cristina translated all this while adding her own detail. One is classic Mario: his game of appearing at the bathroom door while she dried her hair, flicking the light off and then scampering away. Yet the story that really stood out, among all the reminiscences, concerns his professional life and the sense of relief he felt after City had won the FA Cup in 2011, because it meant for certain that Mancini would stay on and, by nature of their relationship, gave Balotelli a second season to show what he can do.
His first year in Manchester had been an unsatisfactory one, not helped by a recurring knee injury, and he had talked determinedly about wanting to put it right. There is, believe it or not, at least a semblance of professional pride. Cristina never tires of arguing that the real Balotelli is a lot different than the tabloid caricature.
It is difficult, though, to find a legitimate defence when he is still to show City he is capable of playing serious, grown-up football over a sustained period while, all the time, there is the permanent blizzard of headlines and the overpowering suspicion of someone who cannot be fully trusted.
Seven months on, that performance for Italy against Germany in the Euro 2012 semi-final is held up as the evidence that he is worth persevering with, but forgive me for not buying into that theory. Surely the reason why everyone refers to his two goals that night is because it was the exception, not the norm. There has been nothing even vaguely close for City since. That, essentially, is the bottom line. Even ignoring everything else that surrounds him – the too-young-too-long culture, the training ground confrontations and persistent sense that he is not taking his profession seriously – the crux of the matter is that he has fallen short on the pitch and it's not getting any better. Sporadic flashes are not enough for a club of City's ambitions. They want reliable excellence, not occasional flashes.
It is probably just a surprise that it has taken until now for Mancini to join in with this way of thinking. The memories are still pretty ghastly, after all, about what happened the last time City played at Arsenal, their opponents on Sunday, and the overwhelming impression it left that Balotelli was utterly incapable of controlling that febrile temper.
It ended with Mancini looking grey with anger and declaring in the heat of the moment that it was "finished" and that Balotelli would not play for the club again. The manager's statements have to be more tactical now, in keeping with a club that optimistically wants €30m (£24.8m) for the player.
The whole business is unsatisfactory, but it's the right decision, the only logical way forward.
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/2013/jan/12/manchester-city-mario-balotelli" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog ... -balotelli</a>
-
There is a good reason why over the coming days and weeks you may hear Roberto Mancini maintaining the public line that Manchester City don't want to sell Mario Balotelli and will happily stick by him no matter how many times he brings the club and himself into disrepute.
The truth is something different. It is just that Mancini is schooled in football politics and understands very well that the first rule of selling is to have a strategy. Admitting that Balotelli is for sale would drive down his price. So a different version is offered for the cameras when, privately, City are already down to the nitty-gritty of talking about how much money they can get and who may possibly want him.
It is a sorry sequence of events, as it always is, when an uncommon talent has strayed dangerously close to the point of wastage. Maddening, too, when attempting to quantify the amount of time and energy Mancini has personally devoted into trying to rewire Balotelli from a full-time problem into the perfectly assembled footballer. Mancini can be as clinical as they come – "the hardest bastard you will ever meet," to revisit a quote from one associate – but it must have been difficult for him to reach this point. Even on Thursday, over lunch at San Carlo Cicchetti, his favourite Manchester restaurant, the journalists in his company were struck by his affection for the player. It is not a decision City have made lightly.
They cannot be blamed, though, and, after all this time, who seriously can accuse them of lacking tolerance now the club have concluded that moving out Balotelli at the end of the season and targeting someone of the calibre of Edinson Cavani or Radamel Falcao would deliver more goals and less hassle?
Mancini used to say that if Balotelli could get his head right he would be up there with Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi. For what it's worth, he still thinks it's possible. Yet the statement looks preposterous sometimes. Messi's total of 91 goals throughout 2012 compares with 13 for Balotelli and confirmation of his place as fourth-choice striker at City. A drought for Ronaldo, with 174 in 172 games for Real Madrid, amounts to two, possibly three matches. Balotelli has managed one goal in the Premier League this season, a penalty in the Champions League and one in the Capital One Cup.
As for gauging their value in other ways – their temperament, the ability to shape matches and an understanding of the will and dedication that is involved – maybe the best way to put it is that while the great and good congregated for the Ballon d'Or awards in Zurich, City's fourth-choice striker was turning out, over-age, for their under-21s at Platt Lane, their old training ground.
Fifa never did justify Balotelli's inclusion on the voting papers before the original list was whittled down, though, believe it or not, three national team captains – Christian Fuchs of Austria, Vixay Phaphouvaninh of Laos and Palestine's Attal Fahed – actually put a tick by his name to finish in third place. Fuchs and Fahed put him in at the expense of Ronaldo. Fuchs decided Balotelli had done more for football last year than Messi. There are some things that are just beyond explanation.
Psychoanalysing Balotelli is not an easy thing either. To date, there has been one newspaper interview in England and its origins are another pointer into his unorthodox way of operating. Balotelli was dining in one of Manchester's Italian restaurants when he noticed the man at a nearby table had a laptop bag stuffed with newspapers. "I bet you're a journalist," he said. So pleased to get it right, Balotelli followed it up by telling the reporter it was his lucky day. On went the tape. His sister, Cristina, is a journalist, based in London and working for the Financial Times, and the family have been happy to spend time with others in the profession. One of this correspondent's more unusual assignments was a request from Balotelli's mother, the diminutive Silvia, to show her round Manchester Cathedral, just down the road from the glass apartment at the heart of the shopping district where her son first lived when he arrived in the city. Over coffee, Silvia told the story of how she and her husband, Franco, a retired warehouse supervisor, had thought their fostering days were behind them, with three grown-up children of their own, until the local authority rang and said they had an abandoned two-year-old who had been in and out of hospital and needed a home. It was Silvia in later years who gave that boy the gold medallion he wears over his shirt. It bears the inscription: "Professionalism, Endeavour, Humility". A shame, perhaps, he does not apply those qualities more often.
Cristina translated all this while adding her own detail. One is classic Mario: his game of appearing at the bathroom door while she dried her hair, flicking the light off and then scampering away. Yet the story that really stood out, among all the reminiscences, concerns his professional life and the sense of relief he felt after City had won the FA Cup in 2011, because it meant for certain that Mancini would stay on and, by nature of their relationship, gave Balotelli a second season to show what he can do.
His first year in Manchester had been an unsatisfactory one, not helped by a recurring knee injury, and he had talked determinedly about wanting to put it right. There is, believe it or not, at least a semblance of professional pride. Cristina never tires of arguing that the real Balotelli is a lot different than the tabloid caricature.
It is difficult, though, to find a legitimate defence when he is still to show City he is capable of playing serious, grown-up football over a sustained period while, all the time, there is the permanent blizzard of headlines and the overpowering suspicion of someone who cannot be fully trusted.
Seven months on, that performance for Italy against Germany in the Euro 2012 semi-final is held up as the evidence that he is worth persevering with, but forgive me for not buying into that theory. Surely the reason why everyone refers to his two goals that night is because it was the exception, not the norm. There has been nothing even vaguely close for City since. That, essentially, is the bottom line. Even ignoring everything else that surrounds him – the too-young-too-long culture, the training ground confrontations and persistent sense that he is not taking his profession seriously – the crux of the matter is that he has fallen short on the pitch and it's not getting any better. Sporadic flashes are not enough for a club of City's ambitions. They want reliable excellence, not occasional flashes.
It is probably just a surprise that it has taken until now for Mancini to join in with this way of thinking. The memories are still pretty ghastly, after all, about what happened the last time City played at Arsenal, their opponents on Sunday, and the overwhelming impression it left that Balotelli was utterly incapable of controlling that febrile temper.
It ended with Mancini looking grey with anger and declaring in the heat of the moment that it was "finished" and that Balotelli would not play for the club again. The manager's statements have to be more tactical now, in keeping with a club that optimistically wants €30m (£24.8m) for the player.
The whole business is unsatisfactory, but it's the right decision, the only logical way forward.
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/2013/jan/12/manchester-city-mario-balotelli" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog ... -balotelli</a>
City_Sean
Well-Known Member
FantasyIreland said:SuperMario's Fireworks. said:i do feel he is the only striker in our side who hasnt had a consistent run this season, i remember he played against wigan, scored his first goal and then was dropped a game later.
Injuries,suspensions and dickheaditis haven't helped.
maybe so mate but still, he deserved a run at some point and wasnt given one.
AgüeroKun
Well-Known Member
All anyone should want from Balotelli (the footballer) is that he at least give 100% and for him not dive on the floor and ask for a foul, its really annoying now. Maybe he CAN become the next big thing, but for now those thoughts seem really far fetched. He needs an attitude adjustment, that's clear. All that should matter at this moment in time is that any time he is called upon, starting or sub, that he contribute to the team in one way or another. Now with Agüero injured he has a chance to get called upon. It's his choice now to show he has matured and he can control himself. Mancini has stuck by you all the time, show some maturity.
Ahead of whom? And Mancini have stated he doesen´t train hard enough to warrant a start, or to be on the bench for that matter.SuperMario's Fireworks. said:FantasyIreland said:SuperMario's Fireworks. said:i do feel he is the only striker in our side who hasnt had a consistent run this season, i remember he played against wigan, scored his first goal and then was dropped a game later.
Injuries,suspensions and dickheaditis haven't helped.
maybe so mate but still, he deserved a run at some point and wasnt given one.
BluePurgatory
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FantasyIreland said:SuperMario's Fireworks. said:i do feel he is the only striker in our side who hasnt had a consistent run this season, i remember he played against wigan, scored his first goal and then was dropped a game later.
Injuries,suspensions and dickheaditis haven't helped.
Never let truth get in the way hey tattoo?????
FantasyIreland
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- 29 Oct 2008
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BluePurgatory said:FantasyIreland said:SuperMario's Fireworks. said:i do feel he is the only striker in our side who hasnt had a consistent run this season, i remember he played against wigan, scored his first goal and then was dropped a game later.
Injuries,suspensions and dickheaditis haven't helped.
Never let truth get in the way hey tattoo?????
Morning halfwit.
A
A
Anonymous
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FantasyIreland said:BluePurgatory said:FantasyIreland said:Injuries,suspensions and dickheaditis haven't helped.
Never let truth get in the way hey tattoo?????
Morning halfwit.
Half ? You're a very generous soul ... ;)