two deals in process

[The Fixer]

80's shorts is a tosser of a poster imo, almost every thread i've just seen bile in his posts often being very agressive i'm sure i'm not the only person to of noticed this?

On a more serious note have you heard anything about mario balloteli coming in from inter? apparently it's in the italian media that discussions are underway mate.

Balloteli appears to be serious trouble - hasn't he been the young kid moaning for last two seasons?

Might be confused with someone else who keeps claiming he wants out due to racial abuse?

Thats correct mate, mourinho has questioned his attitude but also alludes to his undoubted talent.

 

[Maineblue]

Tough decisions, I'd be ruthless myself get the under perfomers in and give them the uiltmatium, you're either with the project or you ain't..

Ability is one thing the desire to play for the club is non questionable.

But the team really doesn't need any major overhauls a couple of defenders and a mid fielder the rest of the squad is quality it's just a question of getting them play well consistently and without any outside distraction ala Robbie and Barca.

But don't think anyone could argue with the likes of Torres/Gerrard/Ribery comming but still think that's dreaming!

 

[lancs blue]

80's shorts is a tosser of a poster imo, almost every thread i've just seen bile in his posts often being very agressive i'm sure i'm not the only person to of noticed this?

On a more serious note have you heard anything about mario balloteli coming in from inter? apparently it's in the italian media that discussions are underway mate.

Balloteli appears to be serious trouble - hasn't he been the young kid moaning for last two seasons?

Might be confused with someone else who keeps claiming he wants out due to racial abuse?

But he does get racist abuse in Italy, Juventus had to play a match behind closed doors as a result of one incident.

 

[tolmie's hairdoo]

Any names Tolmie?

People have already mentioned Chiellini (TaylorWillo will be happy), and there was firm interest from Sven.

Now his bum chum is in the hotseat, you just never know.

Told couple deals were already on the go, but nothing in terms of any names.

Mancini's party last night did include a couple of agents, along with a media pal.

None of us would expect Mancini to let grass grow under his feet, not with the keys to the safe!

 

[johnny on the spot]

High quality article on Balotelli from the Mail. Could well be an option.

Here comes trouble: Inter Milan's brave Mario Balotelli is waiting in the Champions League draw

By Michael Walker

Meet the talented kid called ‘Super Mario’ and the racial abuse that could force him out of Italy...

Last updated at 5:49 PM on 18th December 2009

Comments (0) Add to My Stories

Mario Balotelli exists. It might seem superfluous to state that, but there are people in
Italy, notably Juventus fans, who suggest otherwise. The fact that Balotelli was born in Palermo and has lived in the country all his 19 years and four months is meaningless
to those who started and continue to chant: ‘A black Italian does not exist.’

Italian football, once again, has a bloody nose. Less than six months before its defence of the World Cup, it is not only Silvio Berlusconi, prime minister and owner of AC Milan, who is bleeding.


This week former Juventus chief executive Antonio Giraudo was given a three-year jail sentence for his part in the 2006 match-fixing scandal, Jose Mourinho is embroiled
in an acidic row with sports journalists there, while Mourinho’s most striking young talent at Inter Milan, Balotelli, is considering his future in Serie A due to a culture of
racism so entrenched that Juve fans can sing what they wish and receive meagre punishment.
England is an obvious alternative for Balotelli, although his brother-agent has said ‘not in January’. But today’s Champions League draw could bring the teenager to the
Premier League in February.

Balotelli was in Manchester with Inter for the last 16 last season — and played 70 minutes at Old Trafford — but the noise surrounding the muscular 6ft 2in forward has since been cranked up. Much of it is unpleasant.

‘Sometimes I just want to say leave me in peace and let me live my life,’ a world-weary Balotelli said last week. ‘Sometimes you just get bored with all the negative headlines. You cannot read bad press about yourself and negative things every day.’

From being late for training, to being dropped for being late for training, to taunting opponents and opposition fans and arguing with older colleagues, Balotelli is regarded in Italy as something like a cross between Wayne Rooney and El Hadji Diouf. He has the ability of the former, the popularity of the latter.

Even anti-racism campaigners in Italy acknowledge that Balotelli’s case is complicated. ‘It’s difficult,’ said Daniella Conti of Rome-based group UISP.
‘Of course we condemn every episode of racism and we think it’s unbelievable that you still hear monkey chants and songs, but Mario Balotelli’s attitude on the pitch is not so correct.

‘He’s very aggressive, he is rude to other players, he is seen in Italy as “a bad man” who does not know fair play. The racists use his blackness.

‘But he is also an important symbol of a changing society, the first real black Italian footballer.’

Berlusconi, among others, could contest that last description. A new law states that to be considered a full Italian, your parents must also be Italian. So even though Balotelli was born and bred in the country, many see him as ‘not one of us’.

A difficulty for them, though, is that as of August last year, Balotelli’s passport says he is one of them. He was granted citizenship on his 18th birthday — his legal right — and could well make Marcello Lippi’s squad bound for South Africa.
World Cup star? Will Balotelli light up South Africa?
Balotelli was born in Palermo in 1990, the son of Ghanaian immigrants, Thomas and Rose Barwuah. After the family moved north to Brescia two years later, they agreed to have their son adopted by a local family, the Balotellis.

The skill that was on show last week in Inter’s vital Champions League win over FC Rubin Kazan — a virtuoso Balotelli backheel set up a goal for Samuel Eto’o and a
30-yard Balotelli free-kick later screeched in — became evident early.

During his early teens he joined local club Lumezzane in Italy’s third division and made his debut as a 15-year-old against Padova. Inter were not long in taking him to Milan.

Italy’s under-age managers started looking, too. However, there was still the issue of his official nationality. There was also allegedly a discrepancy in his adoption papers.

But on his 18th birthday Balotelli was Italian and, at a press conference to announce this, he stated his desire to play for Italy even though his Ghanaian parentage meant that Ghana had offered him the chance to play for them when he was 16.

Former Chelsea striker Pierluigi Casiraghi is Italy’s Under 21 manager. He called up Balotelli a fortnight later and the youngster scored against Greece.

He was already a national figure by then. His skin colour ensured that, but so did two goals at Juventus in a Coppa Italia game midway through last season. They brought increased attention and the experienced player-turned-manager Sinisa Mihajlovic talked about Balotelli in dramatic terms.

‘If he carries on improving like this, day after day, he could become one of the all-time greats. I always tell him to relax, as he mustn’t be afraid of anyone or anything,’ said
Catania boss Mihajlovic.

Mourinho, though, began to see a different character, one even the former Chelsea manager thought arrogant. He described Balotelli’s efforts in training as: ‘Twenty-five per cent. If he was at 50 per cent he’d be one of the best players in the world.’ So Mourinho dropped ‘Super Mario’.
It did not prevent the teenager missing a flight to an Under 21 game that dismayed Casiraghi and there was petulance when shown two yellow cards and subsequent red during Inter’s draw at Rubin Kazan in September. Criticised by team-mate Javier Zanetti among others, Balotelli apologised on the club’s website.

Yet Carlo Ancelotti has spoken admiringly of Balotelli, whose Inter contract has another 18 months, and his spikiness has to be set against the intense ugliness of the racism he endures.

Juventus were forced to host a match behind closed doors last April as Italian authorities — who are bidding to stage the 2016 European Championship — stepped in.

‘I’m more Italian than those idiots,’ said Balotelli.

Undeterred, Juve fans ignored this when in November they indulged in a chant of ‘If you jump up and down then Balotelli dies’.
Juve were not even playing Inter. The club were fined £17,000. Some, such as Clarence Seedorf, who has been in Milan for a decade with Inter and then AC, has
suggested the racism directed at Balotelli is an expression of northern Turin-Milan rivalry.

Perhaps, but if Balotelli returns to Brescia once this weekend’s fixtures are over and the winter break kicks in, it will be to a region undergoing an immigration checking
policy called, not so tactfully, ‘White Christmas’.

It feels odd that more than three decades since Viv Anderson played for England, Italy is in this situation. They have had black internationals before — Fabio Liverani, son
of a Somali mother and Italian father, was the first, in 2001 — but Balotelli’s skin is darker. Apparently that matters.

‘Some of the debates in Italy on this are very, very basic,’ said Piara Powar of campaigners Kick It Out. ‘That Juve fans can even sing “No black Italians” says a lot.’

If Balotelli knuckles down then Lippi will struggle to ignore the growing clamour to give him a full international debut prior to South Africa.

The noise in Italy caused by this would be loud and Lippi knows it. Berlusconi would have his say. Then again, if there is one thing Mario Balotelli has heard before, and often, it is white noise.

 

[1_barry_conlon]

There's a lot of anger there, bud.

You were not one of the people I privately PMd with the actual manager, either, before posting everything had been agreed, so that shoots down your bollox.

The only paper who even suggested there was a chance of him going, regardless of result, was The Sun - and those pricks had Klinnsman or Hiddink in.

Ric knows who I am, couple other people on here, that's it.

80's shorts is a tosser of a poster imo, almost every thread i've just seen bile in his posts often being very agressive i'm sure i'm not the only person to of noticed this?

On a more serious note have you heard anything about mario balloteli coming in from inter? apparently it's in the italian media that discussions are underway mate.

And Balotelli is having a hard time at the moment with the plethora of racists that still attend Serie 'A' games. He would be a good shout.

 

[rushts]

How the hell do you have 3 1/2 thousand posts and not know Tolmie is one of very few genuine ITK's on this forum.

Look at his thread on Hughes beingg sacked from from today and then apologise.

with all due respect... BOLLOX... Dont care how many posts you have but all this was in the press, rumour mill friday night, sat early am.. All he does is watch the first editions on the net in the early hours and post them before we all get out of our beer haze. Easy to be an ITK. To prove this, if u can be arsed, look at his transfer window ramblings...... he aint ITK he just studiously reads the same sources we can and posts it hoping some of it will be true.
He then tries to blend it with a bit of mystery. Hes a WUM, and the couple of people who support him on here saying I know his sources as well are also narcasistic fools.

80's shorts, were you on here yesterday? you are way off with your opinion of Tolmie, he was bang on yesterday, he came on, told us all what he knew and cleared off, no bullshit, no "everyone look at me", just a genuine ITK, why can't you accept it ?

 

[Dancini]

Would love to get Ballotelli, imagine he would fall in love with any club/league he isn't racially abused at.

 

[Mattyc55]

Fantastic article that.

 

[the--dud]

Grosso? bit old but a lot of quality..
Santon who plays for Inter is quality, but I dont think hes Italian (Argentine)?
Chiellini?

Santon's Italian mate, quality player...