Mario reached his peak in the 6-1 and never really kicked on from that. he was viciously treated by the tabloids who painted him as stupid and half-crazed when, in fact, he is an educated and well-liked lad. He could never really shrug off his sheltered home background,brought up by a wealthy couple. This made him seek what he thought was street life-palling up with rappers and suchlike. (When he was interviewed by Noel Gallagher, he hadn't a clue about Manchester music).
Alf, by contrast,is a real streetwise guy-his dad's a taxi driver and Vallecas , where the Negredo family come from, is a very rundown suburb of Madrid.
Despite his zany image, Mario rarely produced moments of magic and his value lay more in functional things like being an infallible penalty-taker.
Alf,despite his nickname as ' The beast', is in fact a true football artist , as we have seen plenty of times already- his strike against Bayern,his supercool dummy , his dainty toe-trap and one-touch scooped pass to fuel Yaya's run against Spurs.
If you take Alf's strike on Sunday as a point of contrast, it's possible to imagine Mario executing a turn like that but I suspect that, if Dawson had pushed him in the face like he did with Alf, that he'd have gone down at once appealing the ref -instead of carrying on regardless, pivoting and smashing a rocket shot into the back of the net.
