Player Focus: Mario Balotelli and Italy's Striker Situation

“Pure nihilism,” huffed Zvoni Boban. The Milan great had become exasperated with Mario Balotelli. His opinion was that the striker had played like he didn’t care on Friday night. Against Roma, he had walked around the pitch indolently. Existential questions were posed. Didn’t Balotelli want to be better? And if not what is his purpose as a footballer? 

His reaction to being substituted - “why me?” - had given Boban the impression that Balotelli didn’t understand what he had done wrong, something which the player admitted to if only to hit back at his critics. Perhaps it was because “in the studio they said I’m not a top player maybe that’s why.” Without even the slightest self-criticism, Boban later countered, it’s difficult to imagine Balotelli improving and realising his great potential. The Sky Italia panel accepted that every game is different. Sometimes you play well. Sometimes you don’t. That’s life. But you have to give everything. You have to try and effect the play with conviction. You have to move. 

This is what Boban’s fellow pundit the former Juventus and Italy midfielder Giancarlo Marocchi had put to Balotelli. If you were to combine movement with your speed and strength you’d be one of the best players in the world. Why don’t you? Is it because that’s your natural playing style? Do you feel that you play better that way? Is the coach happy with that? 

“Who’s talking?” Balotelli asked. “He understands nothing about football.” It might not have been easy to listen to but Marocchi’s criticism wasn’t gratuitous. It was constructive. By moving little, he claimed, Balotelli made it easy for Roma’s defenders to pick him up. He was dispossessed 3 times and turned the ball over  due to a poor touch on 4 other occasions. Possession was given away too cheaply. His play was careless. Balotelli’s passing accuracy was down on his season average by 10.6%. His WhoScored rating of 5.7 was his lowest of the campaign.

Inevitably with only six weeks until Italy’s opening World Cup game against England, the papers have asked if Balotelli should be starting for the Azzurri in Manaus. La Gazzetta dello Sport even claimed coach Cesare Prandelli will study a Plan B to use in the event that his protege does not perform to standard in the lead up to the tournament and in the warm-up game against the Republic of Ireland on May 31. Unlike before Euro 2012, competition is fierce. Other players have emerged in addition to established names.  

For instance, it’s becoming harder and harder to justify not playing Torino striker Ciro Immobile, the Capocannoniere in Serie A. He has scored 21 goals this season. All have come from open-play. His partnership with Alessio Cerci is the most prolific in the league [34 goals] and there are calls for them to be given the chance to replicate what they do at club level on the international stage. Mattia Destro, the Roma forward, was averaging a goal every 83 minutes until his four-match suspension. At the time only Lionel Messi and Sergio Agüero were boasting a better ratio in Europe’s top 5 leagues. 

Veteran Luca Toni won’t be going on the basis that he will be 37 next month and Italy need to move on. But after finding the net 20 times for Hellas Verona you can understand why he feels he deserves to go ahead of others who have scored fewer goals [like Alberto Gilardino, a player five years his junior]. Of course it also remains to be seen if Giuseppe Rossi recovers in time. He scored 14 goals by Christmas - the figure Gila and Balotelli have got now - and happened to be comfortably leading the scoring charts until his injury at the beginning of the New Year.

A Rossi-Balotelli partnership has always been Prandelli’s ideal. However they have played together only twice in the last four years and the odds of them starting in Brazil, at least for now, appear slim. For one, it’s an issue of fitness. For both, it’s a case of can they return to form? 

On the surface, that might look like a misnomer with Balotelli. Since his move from Manchester City he has scored 30 goals in 51 appearances for Milan, an impressive record. Break it down, however, and it loses a little of its lustre: 10 have been penalties and 5 free-kicks. As such his general goal-per-minute average falls from one in 137 minutes to one in 270 from open play which doesn’t compare favourably with Immobile’s [115] and Destro’s [83] this season. 

Prandelli doesn’t lack for worthy alternatives then. If his selection policy is meritocratic then maybe he goes with Immobile in tandem with Cerci or Destro. If it’s based on talent, the ability to turn a match and deliver a game-changing moment, though, surely Balotelli retains his place. 

Enzo Bearzot picked Paolo Rossi in 1982 even though he had only three games in his legs after serving a two-year suspension following his implication in the Totonero scandal. Controversially he left Serie A’s top scorer, the Roma striker, Roberto Pruzzo at home. Bearzot believed in Rossi. He stuck with him even when he failed to score against Poland, Peru and Cameroon because he knew what he was capable of. His reward? Rossi scored a famous hat-trick against Brazil, then a brace when Italy met Poland again in the semis. He also got the opener in the final with West Germany. 

A personal feeling is that Prandelli thinks of Balotelli in the same terms. The former Samp coach Vujadin Boskov, who sadly passed away on Sunday, used to say in reference to Balotelli’s mentor Roberto Mancini: “It’s better to have a flawed champion than no champion at all.” His words were true of Bobby Gol. They hold for Balo too.

Do you think Balotelli should start for Italy at the World Cup? Let us know in the comments below