Mario Balotelli is an Italian footballer famous for various controversial stories. Playing for several clubs, Balotelli is having a hard time on self-developing since he was considered to have several bad habits.
This 189 cm man had become the hope of the Italian national team to regain victory. But for some reasons, he failed to actualize his potential.
Mario Balotelli was actually born as Mario Barwuah. He was born on August 12, 1990, in Palermo, Italy, from a couple of Thomas and Rose Barwuah.
The name Balotelli itself appeared after he was adopted by Silvio and Francesco Balotelli. Both of them come from rich families who become the strength behind Mario Balotelli’s fame.
This rich Italian family has a pretty good connection with several Italian football clubs. After Balotelli was sent to one of the football academies in Italy, this 28-year-old man grew to become a prominent player among others.
As if he was born as a player full of controversy, Balotelli’s early life had been filled with various complicated stories. The Balotelli family in Italy claimed that they adopted this former player of AC Milan because his original family was unable to finance Balotelli’s life.
Silvio and Francesco said that Thomas and Rose Barwuah had economic difficulties, so they decided to adopt the child.
After growing up, his biological parents said that the Italian couple only had a 12-month parenting agreement. However, they continued to deny it and insisted to take care of Mario Balotelli until he becomes an adult.
Balotelli’s biological parents often find it difficult to meet their child and eventually, at the age of 18, Balotelli decided to choose Italian citizenship.
Balotelli considered his biological parents only wanted to use his adoptive family’s money. Balotelli felt that he was wasted and his parents deliberately left him in the hospital to be adopted by someone else.
Hearing that statement, his father felt hurt. He really did not want to let him go. After taking legal action, Thomas was still unable to regain custody of his child. He claimed that money is the most important point in this problem.
He did not have enough money to pay a famous lawyer to be able to take what was his. Until now, Balotelli never wanted to be considered an African. He believes that he is Italian.
After playing on the field and becoming known to the world, Balotelli remained to be a person who liked to make horrendous things.
The first case is when he joined Manchester City. He had an accident with his Audi R8 while heading to the practice site. In the incident, Balotelli was known to carry 5,000 pounds of cash or around 73 million rupiahs in his car.
When he was asked by the police why he was carrying so much money with him, he casually replied: “because I am rich”.
Another case is when he threw an arrow at young players of Manchester City. Although it was classified as a dangerous action, Balotelli escaped the punishment.
The most shocking case was when he almost burned his own house. The story began when Balotelli and his friends were having a party at his house at around 1 am local time. Balotelli, who bought a set of 200 pounds of fireworks, lit them in the bathroom.
Unfortunately, the fireworks were actually splashing fire into various corners of the bathroom and hit one of the towels there. Thus, the fire was immediately grabbing the whole room. Even though no one was injured, Balotelli’s actions were criticized by many people.
Besides those silly things, Balotelli was often involved in conflicts with his teammates until the coaches should take an action to handle them.
Behind those controversial stories, Balotelli is also known as a player who often accepts racial treatments.
Silvio and Francesco Balotelli said that their adopted child had received racist treatment since he was at a young age. Different skin colors were the main reason for those disrespectful treatments.
Balotelli also admitted if he had ever experienced unpleasant things while he was in school.
“When there was a snack missing from the table in the school, the teachers immediately accused me without having any investigation first,”
“But then there was an incident that made me continuously crying. I had done all my homework and mom let me play football. I asked my friends, ‘Hi friends, can I play?’ and they said, ‘No Mario, you can’t come, you’re black,’” recalled Balotelli.
While playing at AC Milan, Balotelli also received various painful insults. He was even harassed by Paolo Berlusconi, the younger brother of former AC Milan owner Silvio Berlusconi.
Paolo Berlusconi called Balotelli who had moved from Manchester City for a fee of 19 million euros as “a little black child from our family.”
At one moment, Balotelli had also been caught on camera while crying due to receiving racist treatment.
As if he had become an easy target for racists, Balotelli also could not escape from the racial treatment by Italian supporters. In the match against Saudi Arabia, a banner was seen to insult Balotelli.
“If I were white, then I didn’t have many problems. I received many letters from children who considered me as an example of a black person who did not back down against racism. But, those actions of racism are very embarrassing,”
Then, there were also Juve’s supporters who took part in insulting Balotelli as well.
“In 2009, when I was growing up, throughout the match between Inter and Juventus, they called me ‘monkey’, ‘negro’, ‘returned to Africa’ and mocked me,” said Balotelli.
The Stormfront site was also closed in Italy for calling Balotelli with a racist call,
“He is black and Jewish. He is supposed to play for Israel, not Italy.”
Not long ago, Balotelli commented on various racist actions that had attacked him.
“In England, at the level of football, I rarely see racism,” Balotelli said on the Italian TV show Queli Chell Calcio quoted from Punch.ng.
“In France, I haven’t seen much racism, but nothing like in Italy. In Italy, it is very extreme. “
When he was asked about how it felt to receive such racist insults continuously, he answered,
“I’m a little bit lonely and really sad.”
