As a highly talented enfant terrible, Mario Balotelli has made a certain name for himself in world football. However, the past few years have not been so good for him, but now, at a later stage in his footballing career, he is once again seeking his luck in the Serie A.
Trained at AC Lumezzane, a boy born in Palermo and highly talented, he once developed into a top footballer via Inter Milan. His subsequent stations: Manchester City, AC Milan, Liverpool FC.
But then things went steadily downhill: after several setbacks in his career, he became something of a globetrotter and played more and more for “smaller” clubs. While Nice and Marseille in France were still quite well-known, the same could no longer be said of Brescia, Monza, Sion or Adana Demirspor in Turkey.
The name of this boy: Mario Balotelli.
“Super Mario” is here
He is now 34 years old – but still has not had enough of professional soccer: as expected, the 36-time Italian national player and scourge of Germany in the 2012 European Championship semi-finals has once again answered the call of the Serie A and is joining CFC Genoa.
After nine match days, CFC, which has only one win and a meager six points, lost Italy’s national striker and the sorely missed Mateo Retegui (currently leading the scoring list with ten goals in nine games) to Atalanta Bergamo in the summer. CFC is now Balotelli’s fifth first or second division station in Italy.
After a successful medical check, the transfer was humorously announced on the official Genoa channels. For example, with a picture of Balotelli dressed as “Super Mario” jumping into green tubes. Or in the form of a gaming section customized especially for him in 8-bit pixel graphics – all stylishly accompanied by original “Super Mario” music. The whole thing is, of course, a reference to Balotelli’s nickname, which was inspired by Nintendo’s famous video game character.
Plenty of games and goals in Balotelli’s career
When he arrived in the Ligurian capital, Balotelli was already there on Sunday – and had expressed his anticipation to TUTTO mercato WEB, among others: “I’m fired up for this task. And I don’t want to talk much. I want to get started as soon as possible – and I’ll do my best.”
From now on, the veteran will be trained by Alberto Gilardino, who has been in the job since 2022 and was once a successful striker himself – for example in Parma, for Milan and in Florence. What the coach and the club expect from the son of Ghanaian immigrants, who was given into the care of the Balotelli family from Concesio in the province of Brescia as a child, is clear: goals!
The attacker certainly has no lack of experience, having played 141 Serie A (52 goals), 76 Ligue 1 (41 goals), 70 Premier League (21 goals) or 49 Süper Lig (25 goals) games. Balotelli last played in Turkey for Adana Demirspor, where his contract expired in the summer. Four months later, he signed for Genoa – initially until the end of the season.
