KIEV, Ukraine — The long diagonal pass floated across midfield, its accuracy all the more remarkable for its distance. Waiting with impeccable timing was Mario Balotelli of Italy, one of soccer’s most gifted and eccentric players. He sprinted past the German defense and turned to meet the ball, nimbly switching directions, backpedaling with the gliding agility of a man on skates.
The Germans gave chase, but it was desperate and futile. Already they must have known they would arrive too late. Thirty-five yards from goal, maybe 40, Balotelli let the ball bounce and tap his chest. And he was off again, racing, touching the ball once with his left foot, reaching the edge of the penalty area, the German captain Philipp Lahm in furious and vain pursuit.
Earlier in this semifinal of the European Championships, played Thursday in Warsaw, the 6-foot-2 Balotelli had put Italy ahead, 1-0, with a vaulting header. The narrow stripe of his Mohawk seemed to point to the sweet spot on his forehead as a cross curled in from the flank. The German goalkeeper, Manuel Neuer, moved to his left, but the ball went the other way, beyond his outstretched right hand, and Neuer tossed his water bottle in frustration.
Now Neuer was exposed again, flat-footed, as Balotelli dashed at him. He shot with such power and slicing accuracy that the ball kept rising and swerving until it punched like a fist into the upper right corner of the net. Italy 2, Germany 0. Television cameras caught Joachim Löw, the German coach, picking his fingernails. His team’s chances, probably like his nails, were down to the quick.
Neuer grabbed his water bottle and clapped his hands. Perhaps it was to restore himself. Or to acknowledge Balotelli’s rapacious determination. Or to give consolation to his teammates, who had been favorites at this tournament but whose exit now seemed as inevitable as it was premature.
Balotelli kept running and removed his azure jersey and finally stopped, flexing his tattooed and chiseled arms and torso. Athletic tape fanned across his lower back like slats of an Adirondack chair. He remained unsmiling, his stare defiant, as a teammate ran up to hug him in celebration.
Nearly two-thirds of the match remained, however. Italy’s eventual 2-1 victory was not yet secured. A player is not permitted to remove his jersey, so Balotelli received a yellow-card warning for his preening celebration. One more excessive act — and there have been many in Balotelli’s mercurial career — and he would have risked a second yellow card and automatic suspension for Sunday’s final here against Spain.
When a muscle cramp later seized Balotelli’s left leg, Italy’s coaches did not appear to consider this unfortunate. He left the semifinal with 20 minutes remaining, his artistic temperament not having undermined his artistic talent. Balotelli will no doubt return to the lineup Sunday, providing Italy with something that Spain does not seem to have at the moment: a classic center forward to run at a defense with speed and strength and resolve and precision.
With three goals, Balotelli has scored more than anyone still playing at Euro 2012. One of two Italian players of African descent, he has endured racial abuse, monkey chants from Spanish fans, then more taunting chants from Croatian fans and a banana tossed onto the field. Sometimes, Balotelli has been hesitant at critical moments — thinking instead of just playing. Some thought him too volatile to be put on the Italian team in the first place. But at 21, he has persisted, and his team is one victory from becoming the champion of Europe.
“This is the greatest night of my life,” Balotelli said Thursday, “but I hope Sunday is going to be even better.”
Which Balotelli will show up against Spain? The one who scored twice against Germany? The one who seemed reluctant to shoot on a clear chance in the earlier match against Spain?
Will Balotelli act out as he has, stamping on opponents and dangerously kicking at their legs? Will he kick a goal post as he did after being thwarted repeatedly in the quarterfinals against England? Or will he steel himself for penalty kicks, as he also did in that match, shooting confidently, flexing his muscled arms in exultation?
Will it be a quiet and uneventful weekend, or will his hotel room catch on fire, as his house did last October after fireworks were set off in the bathroom?
Will he have a dispute with his coach? Will he have an allergic reaction to the grass and have to leave early, his face swollen, as happened here in a 2011 Europa League match with his English club team, Manchester City?
Will he be resolute or put-upon? Will he be the same player who cuffed a pass while sliding to the ground in May, assisting in Manchester City’s improbable comeback to win the Premier League? Or the one who raised his club jersey last fall to reveal the self-pitying message, “Why Always Me?”
“He is an emotional young kid,” United States Coach Jurgen Klinsmann said. “He can make you or he can break you. In a good moment, he can decide the game. The next moment he can lose the match with a stupid thing and get sent off. You don’t know what you will get. If he is able to mature he can have an amazing career.”
It is difficult being judged by so many people, when so few possess his talent, Balotelli has said. After scoring on a late, superb volley in a group-match victory over Ireland, facing away from the goal on a near bicycle kick, Balotelli said he did not have to prove anything to anyone.
“I’m not a Super Mario or a Stupid Mario,” he said at a postgame news conference. “I’m just Mario.”
His agent had compared him to Peter Pan, and he agreed to some extent.
“There are two metaphors for Mario the person and not Mario the footballer,” Balotelli said. “I think I am a man, but I don’t believe I need to say it. But I could also be Peter Pan because I do things my own way and I am free. So, yes, maybe I should say that I am Peter Pan — although I am much more of a man.”
Of course, Spain will not relent for man or Peter Pan on Sunday. It is the 2008 European champion, the 2010 World Cup champion, a team seeking to be the first to win three major tournaments in succession. It is known for its beautiful attack, but its defense has been impenetrable. Spain has not surrendered a goal in the knockout round in nine consecutive matches since the 2006 World Cup.
In the Euro 2012 semifinals, Spanish defenders threw themselves at Portugal’s Cristiano Ronaldo like slam dancers, stepping in his way when necessary and knocking him down. Ronaldo seemed to lose something of his enthusiasm in this mosh pit, not to mention the accuracy of his shots.
Asked if Spain thought it could make Balotelli lose his composure, the midfielder Cesc Fàbregas spoke of him as if he were an explosive that needed to be defused.
“Balotelli is a great player,” Fàbregas said. “Clearly, he is a threat. We will do our best to deactivate this threat.”
Family Tensions
Balotelli dedicated his two goals against Germany to his adoptive mother. He sought her out after the match and gave her a kiss. He was born in Sicily, named Mario Barwuah, the son of immigrant parents from Ghana in West Africa. Intestinal problems became so severe, his birth father has said, that young Mario was baptized in fear that he might die. At age 2, he was sent to live near Brescia, Italy, with white foster parents, Francesco and Silvia Balotelli. Eventually, Mario took their name and, at 18, in 2008, he became an Italian citizen, eligible to play for its national soccer team.
His personal life has been as unsettled as his professional career, one perhaps influencing the other. As he gained citizenship, Balotelli accused his birth parents of having abandoned him in a hospital and having tried to reconnect only after he gained fame as a professional player.
“If I didn’t become Mario Balotelli,” he said in a television interview, “then Mr. and Mrs. Barwuah would not have cared about me for anything.”
In a 2010 interview with The Daily Mail of London, Thomas and Rose Barwuah said poverty was what led to their separation from their son. Mario was sickly, they said, and they tried to do what was best for him at the time. They tried to regain custody for 10 years, they told the newspaper, but they had no money for lawyers and the courts did not rule in their favor. They accused the Balotellis of turning their son against them.
“How can he say we just want to know him for his money?” Thomas Barwuah told The Daily Mail, referring to Mario. “It’s not true. We don’t want any money. We are Christians.”
Along with Balotelli’s family tensions, his color has also contributed to a kind of otherness, a sense of being different, an outsider, a foreigner in his own country, Silvia Balotelli has said. That appears evident in the way Mario has been treated by opposing fans at Euro 2012, some of whom have taunted him with racial slurs. The Spanish soccer federation was fined about $25,000 by UEFA, the sport’s European governing body, after fans directed monkey chants at Balotelli during group play.
Croatia’s soccer federation was later fined about $100,000 after its fans also made monkey chants toward Balotelli, and photographs surfaced of a banana being picked up off the turf by a sideline steward. Some criticized UEFA, however, for imposing a smaller penalty for racism than the nearly $126,000 fine it levied on Denmark’s Nicklas Bendtner for displaying underwear that bore the name of a betting company.
“UEFA are not serious,” Rio Ferdinand, a former captain of the English national team, wrote on his Twitter account, saying the organization’s fine for the racism incident was “rubbish.”
Before Euro 2012, Balotelli told France Football magazine that he would not tolerate racism, recounting a time when someone had thrown a banana at him in a bar in Rome, when he played for Inter Milan in the Italian league’s Serie A. If that happened in the streets of Poland or Ukraine, he told the magazine, “I will go to jail because I will kill them.”
If he noticed racial abuse in the stands, Balotelli said he would “walk off the pitch and return home.” The referees have been empowered to temporarily stop or abandon matches if racist acts occurred. But none of the 30 matches played were interrupted. Michel Platini, UEFA’s president, said beforehand that any player who left a match without the referee’s permission would be subjected to a yellow-card warning.
Perhaps Balotelli did not hear the monkey chants aimed at him. An athlete’s concentration can tune out the noise of thousands, tens of thousands, of fans. Or perhaps he decided that playing and winning were more powerful rebuttals than protesting and walking away. Yet the issue persists. Even reactions at home meant to be compliments can appear insensitive. Last week, La Gazzetta dello Sport, a top Italian sports newspaper, apologized for a cartoon that depicted Balotelli as King Kong.
Along with his strike partner Antonio Cassano, and the consummate midfielder Andrea Pirlo, Balotelli has come to embody Italy’s ambitious, attacking style under Coach Cesare Prandelli. This, of course, is no small matter in a country legendary for its defense and the smothering approach known as catenaccio, or door bolt.
Balotelli has referred to himself as a genius and does not always seem to heed the admonishment on the medal that he wears, given to him by his adoptive mother. It says, “Professionalism, Endeavor, Humility.” But Italy is winning and behavior that might have once have been described as divisive is, at the moment, remembered as endearing, or at least not disruptive.
“He’s quite an extravagant guy,” Joe Hart, England’s goalkeeper and Balotelli’s teammate at Manchester City, said before the quarterfinals. “I think Mario accepts, with the way he is, that sometimes he’s going to bring attention to himself. There’s no acting with him. He just does as he does. And when he’s on form football-wise, he’s a great player.”
Most people try to break out of prison. Balotelli once broke in, sort of. In the fall of 2010, he was briefly questioned by Italian authorities after driving his Mercedes into a women’s prison, curious to see what it was like. Last January, Balotelli parked his Bentley at Xaverian College in Manchester, asked where a restroom was, then toured the campus as students who were Manchester City fans cheered him on.
“We weren’t able to enroll him on any courses, but he is welcome back anytime,” a college representative told The Guardian.
Few may suggest it now, but many wondered until recent days whether Prandelli was foolhardy for including Balotelli on his Euro 2012 roster. In truth, Prandelli needed young strikers, especially after the American-born Giuseppe Rossi was lost to a knee injury. Still, Balotelli was a risk after his erratic and enigmatic season at Manchester City in 2011-12.
Last October, the day before a match against City’s arch rival, Manchester United, fireworks were set off through a window in his bathroom. The towels caught fire, and the late-night blaze spread through the first floor of his house. Two fire crews were summoned; Balotelli escaped unharmed. The fire came only hours after Roberto Mancini, Manchester City’s manager and a fellow Italian, said he hoped Balotelli was “changing his mentality.” Balotelli blamed a friend for the incident.
A Fiery Reputation
It frequently seems that sports build characters more than character. And allowances have long been made, and heads have long turned the other way, to accommodate the most talented athletes. Balotelli scored twice that weekend in a 6-1 torching of Manchester United. That is when he unveiled the T-shirt that said, “Why Always Me?” His reward? A day or two later, he was named Manchester’s official ambassador for fireworks safety. No joke.
Still, his reputation kept being singed. In January, Balotelli was suspended for four matches for stepping on the head of Scott Parker of Tottenham Hotspur; a month later, Balotelli was dropped for Italy’s exhibition against the United States.
“He seems a little agitated to me,” Prandelli said at the time. “When I say we have to reach the European Championships prepared, I mean I don’t want to see players who at the first sign of difficulty commit reaction fouls and get sent off, leaving their teammates to struggle with 10 men.”
In April, in a 1-0 loss to Arsenal, Balotelli tackled Alex Song so recklessly, cleats to the shin, that some believe Song was lucky not to have broken his leg. In the same match, Balotelli was sent off after two warnings for impetuous challenges on Bacary Sagna. Mancini was incensed. It appeared that the club had blown an opportunity to win its first top-flight title in England in 44 years. A three-match ban followed.
“I’ve finished my words for him,” Mancini said after that game. “I love him as a guy, as a player. I know him. He’s not a bad guy and is a fantastic player. But at this moment, I’m very sorry for him because he continues to lose his talent, his quality. I hope he can understand that he’s in a bad way for his future. And he can change his behavior. But I’m finished.”
Well, not quite. On May 13, in one of the most stunning final days in the Premier League’s history, Manchester City scored twice in extra time to defeat Queens Park Rangers, 3-2, and win its first title since 1968. Balotelli set up the winning goal for Sergio Agüero, passing the ball as he went to the turf on his side. In a postgame television interview, Balotelli said his critics “just have to shut up.”
Mancini changed his mind and said he wanted Balotelli to remain in Manchester. A day later, Balotelli was named to Italy’s provisional team for Euro 2012.
“I am confident he will have a great European Championship,” Mancini told reporters. “I hope Mario will be the leader of the national team because he is the best Italian striker. He just needs to make his brain work. That is his only problem.”
After not scoring against Spain and Croatia, Balotelli did not start against Ireland. But he entered as a substitute and after his late, inventive goal, he began to scream something in English. His teammate Leonardo Bonucci put his hand over Balotelli’s mouth, gagging him, explaining that Balotelli’s instinctiveness is his strength and his weakness.
It was not clear whether Balotelli was yelling at Prandelli for keeping him out of the starting lineup. But Prandelli said the young player had to learn to take criticism, adding, “The day he realizes that no one is trying to hurt him and we all want him to do well, he will make progress.”
As the semifinals approached, Prandelli urged Balotelli to become more ruthless. The forward could not have been more pitiless against the Germans. Or audacious. If anyone was upset by his shirtless celebration, Balotelli said, “They saw my physique and they’re jealous.”
