One botched miss with the goal at his mercy at Loftus Road on Sunday seemed to sum up the disastrous start to Mario Balotelli’s Liverpool career. The Italian has failed to score in six Premier League appearances, and his latest goalless showing against QPR has led to near-unanimous condemnation of his work rate and attitude. Social media inevitably led the anti-Mario brigade, with legions of keyboard warriors taking to Twitter to call Balotelli every profanity under the sun, while the Daily Mirror has felt the need to put up an article explaining why the Liverpool striker is ‘literally’ the worst striker in the league, a judgement they have decided is an appropriate one to make after just eight games.
Mario Balotelli is paid handsomely to kick footballs into nets, and as it stands he is not doing his job. Any footballer who is underperforming warrants some criticism, yet the treatment of Balotelli – ranging from disproportionate vitriol and abuse to a more subtle demeaning of his character – amounts to nothing more than bullying.
He is not the first and certainly won’t be the last striker to miss an open goal – he is a human being, and human beings make mistakes. However, to accuse the Italian of a lack of effort, of being a disgrace or of not trying based on this one error is completely unfair. A languid style of play is in his nature. He has always been more of a Dimitar Berbatov than a Luis Suarez, yet the former has never experienced the levels of abuse that Balotelli has. Although we as football fans are in the dark with regards to how the Italian conducts himself in training on a daily basis, his regular inclusion in the Liverpool first team suggests that his effort is good enough for Brendan Rodgers, a man famed for demanding the very highest standards of work ethic. As for his apparent apathy, Balotelli’s visible frustration following his miss, or indeed for most of the game against QPR, shows that he does care about his individual performance as well as that of the team.
His travails in a Liverpool shirt may very well be down to a lack of understanding with his teammates, and with Balotelli having only arrived at Anfield two months ago, it will take time for him to become accustomed to a new system. The return to fitness of Daniel Sturridge will also be beneficial to his game, as the Italian showed signs of forming an effective partnership with the England international during Liverpool’s 3-0 victory against Tottenham Hotspur in August, the only game in which the pair have appeared together. So why is the castigation of Balotelli more extreme and more frequent than that of other high-profile underperforming footballers?
Ultimately, the way in which Balotelli is targeted serves as just another symptom of a more general victimisation and degradation of the player which has followed him throughout his professional career.
Since breaking through the ranks at Inter Milan, the media has taken great pleasure in treating Balotelli like a plaything instead of a footballer. His eccentric nature and his struggles in dealing with immense fame and wealth are probably the result of a troubled upbringing where he was adopted by an Italian family from a young age and made to feel left out when growing up by virtue of being black. Not that this matters one bit in the world of football, of course.
The treatment of Balotelli is akin to a human form of bear-baiting – he is there to be prodded and teased until he produces a newsworthy reaction, or failing this, is made the subject of an entirely fabricated story, “because that’s the kind of thing Mario would do”.
By treating him like nothing more than a buffoon, a joke and a caricature to be lampooned – lapped up willingly by the public – the media has constantly undermined the 24 year-old’s professional career, and Balotelli may still be suffering psychologically as a consequence. If he is not getting treated seriously as a footballer, how can he expect to focus on the pitch?
In Dr. Steve Peters, Liverpool have a renowned and well-respected sports psychologist that could help Balotelli to deal with his problems. It must be remembered that just last month the Italian was the victim of horrific racist abuse after he dared to have a dig at Manchester United on Twitter following their defeat to Leicester City, and the emotional effects of being subjected to such a torrent of hatred should not be underestimated. Of course, having a dig at Balotelli after his performance in the QPR game would never have prompted such a vicious reaction.
Mario Balotelli has every right to be criticised, just like any other underperforming footballer. However, the Italian is too often made into a scapegoat, or a figure of fun to be exploited and laughed at. The man is clearly having a tough time, and such incessant abuse is only going to have a detrimental effect on a player whose confidence is shot. Treat him like a human being for once, and he may begin to justify what the initial fuss was all about. Enough of the bullying – it’s time to lay off Mario.
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