Euro No Shows : Super Mario Balotelli

May 12th, 2008 | by: Marco Stucazzo |

Ok, Ok, don’t castrate me. After Nesta and Totti comes Balotelli. No shows isn’t about crazy talented players of azzurri past (get ready for some Baggio action), it’s about who’s not going to Euro 2008 and Mario isn’t going. Super Mario Balotelli is a force to be reckon with. At 17 years of age he has already surpassed David Suazo in the Inter Striking hierarchy. He manages to double the Italian content of Inter Plate every time he enters the field of play.

But Mario Balotelli won’t even make it in the 2008 Olympic squad because the teenager will be turning 18 years of age in August. Balotelli was Born in Palermo to Ghanaian parents. And was then adopted by an Italian family form Brescia before making his way to the Inter’s primavera side. Voilà his life story in less than 2 sentences! But Balotelli still can’t play for Italy because of stupid paper issues.

Super Mario , and when I say Super I mean Super had this to mention when he spoke to Corriere Dello Sport earlier this month;

“I feel like a Second Division citizen. The Italian law is unjust and needs to be changed,”

“Even having been born here, I am still not being recognised as a citizen and I find that to be enormously unjust. “I have turned down an invitation to play for Ghana because I want to wear the Azzurri shirt. The reason I did so is because I was born in Italy and I have always lived there, so I feel like an Italian.”

Hell I could play for the Azzurri (metaphorically speaking of course, and it probably be Baseball only) and this nerazzurro can’t? I totally agree with Mr. Balotelli about the crappyness of Italian bureaucracy

Let the boy play ! The U21 squad needs Balotelli ad he’ll be knockin’ on the Senior Squads door very soon. I can see it now, Euro 2012 a strike duo of Stefano Okaka Chuka and Mario Balotelli, that would be a powerful frontline !

People who hate Linkin Park beware !

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James

Thanks sooo much for that warning! Would’ve missed a nice video
mmmh

I smell racism…
Michel-Olivier

balotelli is not a citizen because his parents are not italian citizen. it’s like in france, if your parents are not french citizen even if your born in french soil you will not acquire french citizen. it’s the same law in japan, greece, india, poland, singapore, haiti, and other nations.
but i cant wait till he get his citizenship, he’ll make a deadly partnership with acquafresca and D. rossi that will see italy win the WC 2010.
http://no.com joe

I doubt he will ever play for italy. Never has a black man ever played for italy and balotelli wont be the first.. you have to know italy to understand..
Franco

Mario Balotelli represents the Italy of the future. Any thought of a black man never playing for Italy is nonsense. There would not be so many black players in Italy’s serie A if Italy was as racist as joe from the netherlands is trying to imply. Italy’s citizenship’s laws are antiquated and need to be changed but I can think of many a country with black foot players that are still much more racist than Italy. You have to read the history books of places like England, France, Germany and Holland to understand.
Tuta

I don’t think we can generalize the term (racist) to the whole of Italy!
some fans of certain teams are ricists but balotelli plays for Inter, I don’t see Italian nerazzurri booing him or minding that he plays!
all of europe have been racist for a very long time I don’t expect people to get over it overnight. it’s gonna take time to be 100% anti-racist!
Plus, there hasn’t been a lot of italian black players, add to that world-class material and you’ll probably get a big fat ZERO!
Poeple used to say that an Italian player who doesn’t play in the scudetto will never play for the Azzurri and they would say “take Zola as an example” I never bought that B.S … and now we can see that Zambrotta plays in la liga and Luca plays in the Bundesliga and they play for the azzurri. you see how you look at the issue depends on your own background and bias. I am not italian by the way so am not defending any country or attacking any!