Mario Balotelli is having a hard time finding a place to play football at the moment, as Liverpool have frozen him out and no other clubs are making big offers to save him. But that hasn’t stopped Puma from using his name, hairstyle, and catch phrase to market a new line of products to children.
After scoring four goals in 28 appearances during his first season at Liverpool, Mario Balotelli has been completely shunned by the club as they try to unload him. As happened when Liverpool’s relationship with Raheem Sterling went sour, stories painting Balotelli as a destructive force have conveniently been “leaked.”
Raheem Sterling scored just two minutes into his Manchester City debut against Roma in Australia. Naturally, this was a moment that Liverpool fans embittered by the 20-year-old’s prolonged and hostile move away from their club were happy to ignore. But Mario Balotelli wouldn’t let them do that.
A week after giving Premier League champions Chelsea a guard of honor at Stamford Bridge, Steven Gerrard got one of his own before his final match at Anfield (unless he goes back in January after moving to the LA Galaxy this summer, which he’s already discussing with Liverpool chairman Tom Werner).
Four days after missing Liverpool’s disastrous trip to London (where they lost 4-1 to Arsenal) with minor training ground injury, Mario Balotelli also skipped their trip to Blackburn for the FA Cup quarterfinal replay. Though a Philippe Coutinho goal was enough to send Liverpool to Wembley and a semifinal date with Aston Villa, Balo’s absence was enough for yet another pundit to criticize him.
Steven Gerrard and Mario Balotelli are men with two very different reputations, but recent events prove that this is the result of Gerrard’s concerted efforts to distract from his own misdeeds.
In the aftermath of Steven Gerrard’s stomp and go performance in Liverpool’s 2-1 loss to Man United, Mario “I do what I want” Balotelli entered the match and promptly earned a yellow card himself. A bit later, the Italian striker got into a tussle with Chris Smalling by the touchline and, in order to prevent him from suffering a similar fate to Gerrard, several Liverpool fans held Mario back from charging at his opponent.
On the eve of Liverpool’s big match against Manchester United, Mario Balotelli posted (and subsequently deleted) a video to his Instagram account clarifying two things:
1) That he supports Liverpool.
2) That he does what he wants.
Each of Mario Balotelli’s last two goals have been late winners for Liverpool and each have prompted someone who should know better to criticize him for somehow not doing it properly. At this point, it has become clear that no matter what Balotelli does, someone will find a way to scold him for it. So in the interest of streamlining this process, here are a list of positive things Mario Balotelli might do and ways to turn them into negatives…
For the second time this month, Mario Balotelli came off the bench to score a winner for Liverpool — this time in a Europa League match against Besiktas. And for the second time this month, Balotelli is getting criticized for how he did it.
