Balotelli E-Book

Luca Caioli

• Herausgeber: Icon Books
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Serie: Luca Caioli
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Seitenzahl: 390

Beschreibung

Mario Balotelli has a reputation like no other in football. Since exploding on to the scene at Inter Milan in 2007, he has won league titles in both Italy and England, moving between Europe's elite clubs. Yet for all his undoubted talent, he is better known for his off-field antics – not least his infamous run-ins with both the police and Manchester's firefighters. Once described by José Mourinho as 'unmanageable', match-winning performances at the highest level have continued to convince clubs such as AC Milan and Liverpool to give him a chance. With exclusive access to friends, teammates and coaches, acclaimed football biographer Luca Caioli talks to the people best placed to explain the mystery that is Mario Balotelli.

Leseprobe

BALOTELLI

About the author

Luca Caioli is the bestselling author of Messi, Ronaldo, Torres, Neymar and Suárez. A renowned Italian sports journalist, he lives in Spain.

BALOTELLI

THE REMARKABLE STORY BEHIND THE SENSATIONAL HEADLINES

LUCA CAIOLI

Translated from the Italian by Laura Bennett

Published in the UK and USA in 2015 by Icon Books Ltd, Omnibus Business Centre, 39–41 North Road, London N7 9DP email: [email protected]

Sold in the UK, Europe and Asia by Faber & Faber Ltd, Bloomsbury House, 74–77 Great Russell Street, London WC1B 3DA or their agents

Distributed in the UK, Europe and Asia by TBS Ltd, TBS Distribution Centre, Colchester Road Frating Green, Colchester CO7 7DW

Distributed in Australia and New Zealand by Allen & Unwin Pty Ltd, PO Box 8500, 83 Alexander Street, Crows Nest, NSW 2065

Distributed in South Africa by Jonathan Ball, Office B4, The District, 41 Sir Lowry Road, Woodstock 7925

Distributed in India by Penguin Books India, 7th Floor, Infinity Tower – C, DLF Cyber City, Gurgaon 122002, Haryana

Distributed in Canada by Publishers Group Canada, 76 Stafford Street, Unit 300, Toronto, Ontario M6J 2S1

Distributed to the trade in the USA by Consortium Book Sales and Distribution, The Keg House, 34 Thirteenth Avenue NE, Suite 101, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55413-1007

ISBN: 978-184831-913-4

Text copyright © 2015 Luca Caioli English language translation copyright © 2015 Laura Bennett

The author has asserted his moral rights.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, or by any means, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

Typeset in New Baskerville by Marie Doherty

Printed and bound in the UK by Clays Ltd, St Ives plc

Contents

1 The Beginning of a Fairy Tale

2 The Son of Immigrants

3 Mum and Dad

4 Pink and Black

5 The Parish Sports Centre

6 Circus Tricks

7 Lume

8 Like the Champions League

9 An Army of Suitors

10 300,000 Euros

11 Full Steam Ahead

12 Flat Out

13 A Foreigner No More

14 Mourinho, the Affectionate One

15 Racism

16 A Difficult Year

17 I’m Not a Bad Boy

18 A Modern-Day Rock Star

19 The Hug

20 Balo is Back

21 Bye Bye Italy

22 Flop

A Career in Figures

Bibliography

Acknowledgements

Chapter 1

The Beginning of a Fairy Tale

‘I gave him his first start. Me. And it was down to luck. That is how life is. But you want to know the details.’

Of course.

‘OK, so I’ll tell you everything. Usually when I’m in charge of a team, if they’re playing on a Sunday, I get them to play a friendly against a local team on the Thursday before. Amateur non-league teams of different standards. I never make them play against the Berretti Under-20 team or the Allievi Under-17 team from my club. I send on eleven players for the first half and then another eleven for the second half. In the first half, the reserves play. In the second half, it’s more or less the first team.

‘I had joined the Lumezzane bench towards the end of the season, for the 27th match. There were only eight games left until the end of the Serie C1 championship. For the first two matches, we managed to find teams that weren’t local, but before the sixth, there wasn’t a team for us to play our usual practice match against, so they told me we had to play the first half against the Under-20 team and the second against the Under-17s.’

Valter ‘Sandro’ Salvioni, born in 1953, is a former midfielder with 56 appearances in Serie A, at Foggia and Brescia, and one goal to his name in Italy’s top flight. In 1989, he swapped the pitch for the bench and became a manager. He has spent his career looking after Under-20 teams and those in Serie B, C and D in Italy, Switzerland and France. In the spring of 2006, this took him to AC Lumezzane. Sitting in the living room of his terraced house in Gorlago, his home-town in the province of Bergamo, Salvioni has an hour or so to spare before he is due to commentate on the Atalanta match for local TV. With a Bergamasque accent and deliberate patience, he recalls those days in late March and early April 2006, days that would change the life of a boy whose surname at that time was Barwuah.

‘That Thursday, the non-first team players had to play the first half against the Berretti team, boys aged between seventeen and nineteen. It was a tough test for the reserves. In the second half, the first team played the Under-17s. There I am, on my feet, minding my own business watching the game quietly when I see this kid do a rainbow flick to get past my central defender, a Lumezzane first team player, and speed off down the wing. I watched him for about five minutes, then I went to the Under-17s’ coach and said: “Listen, that boy there, he’s coming with me tomorrow. I’m going to play him on Sunday.”’

Massimo Boninsegna, 47, a former player with Orceana and Forlì and now coach in one of the top amateur leagues at CastelnuovoSandrà, managed that Under-17 team. He remembers the moment differently: ‘Salvioni hadn’t been there long. He’d taken over from Marco Rossi, who had been sacked after the home defeat to Sambenedettese. He came to talk to me after he had seen what Mario could do in the practice game against the first team. We had a corner. The first team were zonal marking; Salvioni had given specific tasks to each of his defenders but no one expected Mario to try an incredible bicycle kick from the edge of the area. The ball hit the crossbar and bounced onto the line.

‘In or out? I was refereeing and I gave the goal. It was too good a shot not to reward him. After the session, Salvioni came to me and said he was going to take Mario in a couple of Sundays’ time. I told him I would be nothing but happy if he took him, that I would be delighted for him to make his Serie C debut. Then he asked me if I thought the kid was ready. What could I say but yes, absolutely ready? I was convinced.’

But things were not as simple as they seemed. Despite these assurances, Sandro Salvioni was told by the club management that Mario Barwuah Balotelli could not play.

‘“What do you mean he can’t play?” They said he was only fifteen. I asked if they were joking. He’s good. When he has the ball at his feet he’s not afraid to try things. He’s got personality, quality, technique and speed. He may be fifteen, but when he is on the pitch he looks 30 to me. I’m taking him with me. I insisted,’ Salvioni remembers.

But the response was the same: ‘You can’t pick him. He’s fifteen and you have to be sixteen to play with the professionals. Talk to the chairman and the director of football and see what they have to say.’

‘So I went. “Mr Chairman,” I said. “This kid has to come with me. We’re away at Padova on Sunday and I want him to play.” He said I couldn’t but I told him we needed Mario. We really did need him, as Lumezzane’s two strikers, Carlo Taldo and Alessandro Matri, were both unavailable. We were going to have to bring someone up from the Under-20s or the Under-17s to put on the bench. Plus, we needed him because Lumezzane were second from bottom in the league and on the brink of relegation to Serie C2.’

Everyone at Lumezzane knew Mario was a good player, including Gian Bortolo Pozzi, the chairman, but to play with the professional footballers in Serie C1 you needed to be sixteen years old.

But Salvioni refused to give up. Eventually, the director of football told him: ‘The only thing we can do is get authorisation from his family and try to ask for a special exemption for him from the league. We will send a letter explaining that we want the boy to play in the first team, with an attached certificate from our doctor attesting to his physical fitness. Then we will have to wait and see what they say.’

Salvioni asked how long it would take. The director of football replied that they would hear something either the following evening or on the Saturday. ‘Send the letter and let me know.’ Salvioni gets up from his sofa and continues his story.

‘Mario trained with us the next day. But we didn’t hear anything. Nothing. The chairman said they were still waiting for an answer. He asked if I was sure about taking him to Padova. My response was adamant; he was someone who could make a difference. “Come and train with the first team tomorrow,” I told the boy. Mario said he had school but I told him he would have to skip classes for once: “I need you with me”.’

‘He turned up on Saturday before the game. We had a training session at 10 o’clock. I was on my way to the ground when I had a phone call from the director of football: “A fax has come through from the association. It’s all OK, they have given us the exemption. Mario can play.” I went into the dressing room and called Mario over. I told him everything was fine and that he was coming with us to Padova on Sunday.’

It was 2 April 2006, a sunny spring Sunday at the Euganeo stadium. Padova against Lumezzane, the 29th day of the championship, the return match in what was then Serie C1. Maurizio Pellegrino’s Padova were fourth in the table and unbeaten at home. But after a brilliant start to the season, they were in danger of failing to reach the promotion playoffs. In short, they needed a win. On paper it should have been easy, given that Lumezzane were without half their first team players and had the unenviable distinction of having lost the greatest number of away matches with ten defeats so far. The Brescians looked as if they had been written off, were running out of time and in danger of automatic relegation. Yet, in the first half Lumezzane managed to dominate their opponents, who seemed listless and short on ideas. The only threats to Brignoli, the Lumezzane keeper’s goal came about half an hour in: a header from the Argentine, Christian La Grotteria, was just off target and a rocket from Andrea Tarozzi went out to the side. As if this was not enough, Pellegrino, the home team manager, was forced to rethink his defence when, in the 23rd minute, Paolo Cotroneo, the central defender, was struck by tachycardia out of the blue and left-winger Andrea Suriano reported muscular difficulties in the 33rd minute. Unexpectedly, it was 0-0 at the end of the first half. The Lume boss suddenly realised he might be able to pull something off.

‘There was not much more than half an hour left to go. I looked at Mario and told him to get ready to go on. ‘I remember’, Salvioni said, ‘that I had another striker on the bench. I was playing 4-4-2 and had two forwards on the pitch and two on the bench. It was Giorgio Biancospino, an older boy, but I told him I was sorry but I was putting Mario on. I knew it wasn’t fair, it should have been him, but at that point I preferred Mario because he had the qualities I needed on the pitch at that time. I took Luca Paghera off, another rookie, and put Mario on.’

In the 18th minute of the second half, Mario Barwuah Balotelli got up from the bench. He made his professional footballing debut aged fifteen years, seven months and 21 days. It was not an outright record (Catilina Aubameyang, who had played for Reggiana in Serie B, and Carta at Olbia in Serie C2 were both younger) but for Mario it was a huge debut for Lumezzane. He later claimed his initial surprise soon turned to fear. Looking out at the terraces in front of him, he saw the 3,643 spectators in the Euganeo stadium and his legs began to shake. But it did not show. Like it was nothing special, he skipped off and went through his warm up before going on in place of Paghera.

What were his first minutes of the game like? ‘He started doing some of his tricks,’ remembers Ezio Chinelli, the then manager of the Lume youth team, who was in the stadium on that fateful 2 April. What tricks? ‘With his first touch, he conjured up a double stepover that left three defenders for dead, then a flip-flap feint, like Ronaldinho. Then he stopped the ball beneath the sole of his boot, challenging his opponent. Immediately, the Padova fans started booing.’

He had been called names because of the colour of his skin before when he was playing for the Lumezzane youth teams: against Lecco, when a parent got up and shouted ‘that n*****’s a great player’, as if it was a compliment; and in a derby against Brescia, when Mario was sent off for elbowing an opponent who had shouted ‘filthy n*****’ behind his back. It may have happened before, but at Padova he received the first racist boos of his career, something that would go on to torment him for years on the football pitch.

‘The happiness and excitement of that debut’, Mario would say years later, ‘meant that I didn’t hear those boos that were so full of hatred. They got stuck in my ears. As time went on, I heard every boo and insult very clearly, though.’

Ululating is a shameful and constant presence in Mario’s life. Some of the touches made by that six foot one inch fifteen-year-old black kid, who no one had heard of yet, may well have deserved the tirade from the Padova fans. Marco Barbirati from Ferrara, the match director, referred to the incident in his report. The following day, Padova were concerned they were going to be landed with a fine from the federation, or worse still, disqualification of the ground due to the reputation of the Euganeo. It was not the first time Padova’s fans had rained racist chants down on a black player, particularly the hard-core group known as the Fronte Opposto, who hoisted a flag with an eagle inside a shield on a black background and had links to the far right. It had even happened before against Lumezzane, just two years earlier. That time the supporters of the team from the Veneto had targeted Lassana Doumbya, a 23-year-old originally French midfielder playing for the Brescian team at the time. The federation had imposed the sanction of one match behind closed doors (a decision that was later revoked) and fined the club €3,000. But on 2 April 2006, as would happen many times on other pitches around Italy, the fact that a fringe element of fans was intent on ululating was not considered particularly important. No fine, no disqualification.

Let’s get back to the match. Five minutes after Barwuah came on, exactly 23 minutes into the second half, Lumezzane took the lead.

‘We scored from a corner won by Mario. I remember he set off down the left wing with his man in his sights. He tried to get away by the goal line and the defender kicked it out for a corner. It came in over the top from the left and Ferrara picked up the clearance from the Padova rearguard and sent it back into the middle. Mario was there waiting too, but suddenly this little guy came racing in – Emanuele Morini (five foot five and ten stone, a Roman who had played in England and Greece) – and scored. Mario played on until the end of the game. We won 1-0 and from then on he stayed with us in the first team,’ Sandro Salvioni concluded.

The next morning’s newspapers were over the moon. ‘Lumezzane, a single shot worth double. Automatic relegation avoided and only four points from safety,’ was the headline in Bresciaoggi, which went on to add: ‘Salvioni praised the whole group: “They were an impeccable team”.’ At the start of the sports pages on page 30, there was even a column about Mario: ‘Barwuah, record-breaking debut. On the pitch at only fifteen.’ A handful of lines described ‘the latest gem bred by the red and blues, born in 1990 to Ghanaian parents, takes his first steps in grown-up football. Showing no sign of nerves, Barwuah got straight into the flow of the game. Lumezzane, who, up to that point had taken few risks, suddenly found their weight going forwards and won the game.’ His ‘first night had gone well,’ the paper stressed, adding: ‘The young striker’s debut was the cherry on top of a very successful cake.’ In the player ratings, Barwuah came away with a six, the average mark in a team in which only Morini, the goal scorer, managed a seven. The verdict on Mario was positive: ‘He shows athleticism and a running ability that should not be underestimated.’ Three days after the praise heaped on him by the local press, the story of the jewel of Lumezzane reached the pages of the Gazzetta dello Sport. The headline was: ‘The fairy tale of Barwuah, the fifteen-year-old playing in Serie C1.’ Mario’s fairy tale, of a boy born in Italy to Ghanaian parents, had well and truly begun. For better, football, and for worse, racism.

Chapter 2

The Son of Immigrants

He has never been to Africa, although it is where the Barwuah family come from. From the Dark Continent. From Ghana. A large coastal country on the Gulf of Guinea, Ghana shares borders with the Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso and Togo, demarcation lines that were imposed during the colonial period and do not respect the territorial limits of the region’s many different communities. It has a surface area of 92,100 square miles and a population estimated at 27 million in 2014. Of more than 75 ethnic groups, the Akan is the largest, with 11.5 million people. English is the official language, but more than 80 other languages are recognised. Christianity is the most widespread religion, followed by Islam and animist cults.

Ghana was the first Sub-Saharan African destination for Europeans keen to trade in gold and the transportation of slaves to America. In 1957, it was the first black African nation to declare independence from the colonial British power. It was an example for other African liberation movements, as was Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana’s first president and a leading exponent of Pan-Africanism and the Non-Aligned movement against neo-colonialism. In 1966, his presidency was overthrown by a coup d’état, which was followed by years of military rule and political instability. In 1981, another coup d’état at the hands of Jerry Rawlings, a flight lieutenant in the Ghana Air Force, gradually saw normality return to the country. In April 1992, democracy resumed with a constitution that authorised a multi-party system. By regional standards, modern Ghana is a model in terms of its democratic system, political stability and freedom of expression and the press. The country is well-administered with low rates of corruption. Thanks to the exploitation of oil fields, which began in 2010, cocoa (Ghana is the world’s second largest producer behind the Ivory Coast), and mineral resources (gold, diamonds, manganese and bauxite), Ghana’s economy now has the highest rate of growth in Africa. This economic boom has driven many migrants to return home. However, this was not the situation in the late 1980s, when Thomas Barwuah decided to emigrate in search of a better life. He and Rose, his wife, were born in Accra, the capital, but came from Konongo. A city of 40,000 inhabitants in the Ashanti region, it is characterised by red earth, brightly-coloured taxis, low-rise housing, tin roofs, markets on every street and now-exhausted gold mines. Konongo was home to Nana Kwadwo Barwuah, Thomas’s father, and Enock and Comfort, Rose’s parents. Enock was a former landowner who grew coconut trees for the confectionery and food industries; Comfort ran a small stall near the market. For the area, they were well-off. When their daughter and son-in-law left for Europe, it was they who looked after Abigail, Rose and Thomas’s daughter, born on 9 February 1988.

Thomas was the first to leave. He followed the route taken by his fellow countrymen, who had begun landing in Italy, the gateway to Europe. The final goal, the dream, was England, Germany or the United States, but getting a visa was not an easy prospect. It was much simpler to obtain an entry permit for Italy, a long-standing country of emigration that was starting to become a country of immigration, so much so that the number of foreign residents was estimated at 500,000 in 1989. There was work to be found in the Bel paese. Many Ghanaian women were employed in Emilia Romagna as caregivers or maids in private homes; others ran small market bazaars or hairdressers. The men found work in the construction or agricultural industries in Sicily and Campania, or in the factories of the north, in Lombardy and the Veneto.

Thomas arrived in Palermo in August 1988. The first few months in Sicily’s capital were tough. Barwuah got by with various odd jobs as a caretaker, cleaner and builder. Rose joined him in February 1989, earning small amounts as a cleaning lady. The couple lived at number 18, Via dei Candelai: two rooms on the second floor of a crumbling, dilapidated eighteenth-century building punctuated by wrought iron balconies inevitably strewn with dangling sheets, blankets and clothes, hung out to dry. Via dei Candelai is a narrow street that crosses Via Maqueda in the city’s historic centre. At that time, its old buildings saw the opening of craftsmen’s workshops and the arrival of new immigrants in search of accommodation. It is now a very busy street full of young people visiting its pubs, clubs, terrace bars and karaoke joints. Today, the Albergheria area, near the Ballarò market, is home to the heart of the Ghanaian community, Palermo’s largest immigrant group.

12 August 1990. Sun, blue skies, temperatures in the high 20s: a peaceful summer’s day. Little more than a month has passed since the magical nights of the Italia 90 World Cup, when Totò Schillaci, born and bred in Palermo’s San Giovanni Apostolo neighbourhood, became an Italian hero thanks to his six goals. Too bad that the long-haired Claudio Caniggia and Diego Maradona, El Pibe de Oro, knocked Italy out on penalties in the semi-final. Third place and a bronze medal that is still being discussed on the country’s beaches a month later. Many are talking about it as if it is still going on. It is almost time for the mid-August Assumption Day break and Italy is on holiday. At the Ospedale Giovanni di Cristina, better known as Palermo’s Ospedale dei Bambini [baby hospital], in Via dei Bendettini in Albergheria, Rose gives birth to a healthy, bouncing baby boy. Or so it seems.

He is to be called Mario, a name that his father Thomas has chosen as a sign of gratitude to Maria Pace, a Palermitan woman with five children who helped him when he first arrived in the city. Her daughter, Maria Brai, a physics professor at the University of Palermo remembers: ‘I think my mother got to know him through a friend Thomas did housework for. She took him in, helped him and gave him money. He was very grateful and would often drive her to our country house, just outside the city. Thomas wanted to go to Canada and he asked me if I could do anything to help, but unfortunately, I didn’t know anyone in Canada. I remember recommending him to a colleague, a professor at the hospital in Brescia, to help him find accommodation for his family when he decided to move to the north shortly afterwards. He found a job in a factory through a friend, a fellow Ghanaian who lived in Vicenza. I tried to help him find somewhere to live.’

13 September 1990. The sky is clear. Twenty-five degrees with a light, cooling breeze. Thirty-one days have passed since Mario Barwuah was born and he is back at the Ospedale dei Bambini. This time he was rushed here in an emergency. Screaming relentlessly, his stomach has swollen up like a football; he is not eating and has been vomiting. Rose and Thomas are terrified. They are afraid of losing their little boy, just as they had lost their first daughter Berenice years earlier. She was only four years old when she died in hospital in Accra. She had an infection, peritonitis, but no one was able to explain why the little girl left this world in a matter of a few brief hours.

In the department of paediatric surgery at the Ospedale dei Bambini, the head physician, Manlio Lo Cascio looks at Mario’s test results: X-rays of the abdomen with a barium enema. He diagnoses megacolon, a congenital disease that can lead to partial or complete obstruction of the bowel, as well as perforations. It is a serious intestinal malformation that could lead to the child’s death. He needs an urgent operation. Now, 75-years-old and retired, Lo Cascio explains: ‘It is a complex procedure but one that is carried out regularly. Devoid of the nerve cells that allow for normal movement, the diseased section of the colon is surgically removed, while the healthy section is lowered down to the anus. Unless complications arise, the operation lasts for between an hour and an hour and a half. Post-operative recovery is quick and favourable in the majority of cases’. Although 25 years have passed and Lo Cascio is not really a football fan, he clearly remembers the operation he performed on the baby that would go on to become a footballer. He also remembers that Mario Barwuah ‘stayed in hospital longer than usual, for a few months. He needed constant medical care and his parents could not guarantee the best possible conditions, but I know very little about that. The nurses in our department looked after him’. The little boy’s convalescence continued until June 1991 due to health and family problems. During those nine months, he was doted on by the nurses in the paediatric unit. In December 1990, they organised Mario Barwuah’s christening in the chapel at the Ospedale dei Bambini. They gave him his bottle, changed him and bathed him every day. Rose and Thomas went to see him whenever they could; Rose slept beside her baby whenever circumstances would allow. They hoped he would recover and stabilise so he could return home with them. Finally, baby Barwuah was discharged at the beginning of June. He was cured. His mum and dad could finally hold him in their arms and take him for a walk in the Palermitan sunshine. Legend has it that one Sunday morning, at the entrance to the church of San Giuseppe dei Teatini near the city’s Quattro Canti crossroads, an elegantly dressed woman in red came up to the Barwuah family, who were about to attend mass in the Baroque church. She looked at the little boy, thought for a moment and told them she was a clairvoyant, a fortune teller. She had a gift; she was not a charlatan and did not try to make money by duping fools. She spoke to the parents of the infant. Before leaving, she said: ‘This child will do great things. He will be loved and hated. He will become a great champion.’

Chapter 3

Mum and Dad

Franco Balotelli was retired. Silvia Nostro had qualified as a nurse and operating theatre technician at the Gaslini hospital in Genoa and the Niguarda hospital in Milan but then chosen to devote herself to raising a family and to volunteer work. She had brought up three children of her own – Cristina, Corrado and Giovanni – and for seven years had provided a home for Loredana, Sonia and Simona, the daughters of her widowed brother. She had also fostered three children from troubled families who could only look after their offspring for a few hours a day. It was a wonderful human experience but a tough one, so tiring that Silvia and Franco had decided to put an end to fostering. They were now getting on in years; their children and nieces had grown up and they were starting to think about enjoying some rest. However, when a social worker called the Balotelli home in 1992 insisting that Silvia and Franco meet a family of immigrants and their child, neither of them was able to say no.

That child was Mario Barwuah.

Thomas Barwuah arrived in the north of Italy in late 1991. He left Rose and Mario in Palermo in the two-room apartment on Via dei Candelai and set off to take a risk on a new venture somewhere else, somewhere where there was plenty of industry. A friend had told him the foundries in the province of Brescia were looking for labourers. Italian manual labour was scarce and non-EU immigrants were considered fine for the toughest jobs. Thomas found work in a foundry in Poncarale and in time would also start his own small business, acquiring used tyres and sending them back to Ghana.

Once he had set himself up properly, he returned to Sicily to bring his wife and son back to the north with him. The Barwuah family struck it lucky with their first housing, an immigrant reception centre. The family of three then went to live with another African family in Bagnolo Mella, surrounded by orchards and vineyards, animal feed factories and foundries, 3 km from Poncarale and 12 km from Brescia. They lived in a single room, 18 feet by 15 feet, which was damp and covered in mould. It was not a situation suitable for a baby that had spent several months in hospital. Rose went to speak to the social workers to find a solution more suited to the needs of her son and the family as a whole. She asked for an apartment and financial assistance, insisting on the fact that Mario was still ill. But, according to her version, they refused to listen, telling her that there were no houses for them but also that they could not live in sub-standard housing with a two-year-old child that still had health issues. The solution proposed by social services was to have Mario fostered in accordance with law 184/1983. Article 2, paragraph 1 states: ‘temporarily deprived of a suitable family environment, the child is fostered by a family able to provide him or her with the education and loving relationships he or she needs’. Little Mario was to be fostered by a local family until the Barwuahs’ living and employment situation improved.

‘We were not convinced about having him fostered but then we decided it might be in Mario’s best interests. When we arrived in Bagnolo Mella, we had nothing, not even the money to pay for his medical care or to feed him,’ Thomas would explain, years later. It was the social workers who suggested the Balotellis as a potential foster family for the boy; they knew they had already had similar experiences that had been successful. They were known locally as straightforward, reserved and very religious people with big hearts, committed to volunteer work. A meeting between the two families was set up, a meeting that no one present has forgotten.

‘We went into a room with twenty Africans standing around a little black boy who could not keep still,’ Silvia Nostro told the Gazzetta dello Sport. ‘My husband had brought him a toy car and the child took his hand and said “Let’s go, friend”. We decided to take him on trial and loaded him into our Fiat Uno and went home.’ Home was in Sant’Andrea, a hamlet near Concesio, a small town with 15,000 inhabitants in the province of Brescia, 27 km from Bagnolo Mella. Houses, terraces, factories and shopping centres are strung out along the road that leads up into the Trompia Valley. At the entrance to the town, a road sign reminds visitors that Concesio was the home town of Pope Paul VI: Giovanni Battista Enrico Antonio Maria Montini was elected to the papacy on 21 June 1963 and beatified by Pope Francis on 19 October 2014. His birthplace, in the heart of Concesio, is a destination for pilgrims from all over Italy.

Mario Barwuah spent his first night in the Balotelli’s duplex apartment on a mat. They needed to get an extra bed for him so for the time being he slept on the floor in Silvia and Franco’s three sons’ bedroom. Mario’s first memory was of the long hallway, where for years he would play never-ending matches with a foam ball against imaginary opponents. It was too bad for Silvia’s vases and ornaments, which would often get caught in the crossfire and end up in a thousand pieces. There were also plenty of items of furniture and sideboards to be scaled and the tree in the garden became Mario’s second home. He would climb up and refuse to come down. And then there was Max, the next-door neighbour’s German shepherd who ran back and forth from morning till night and must have helped the toddler improve his motor skills somehow. In short, the peace and quiet of Casa Balotelli was shattered by the arrival of the mini-earthquake, who in just three months learnt to speak Italian with a Brescian accent he still has to this day. The child gradually overcame his physical issues, a legacy of the long months spent in hospital, and was able to run and play in the park near his home. He was like a whirlwind that could not keep still even for a second. His nursery school teacher remembers that even when it was cold during the winter months, they still had to take him outside to run around. Years later his parents would fill his days with sport to help run down his batteries: football, swimming, judo, karate and athletics, and from aged eight, scout excursions on Saturdays. Mario was a loveable rascal who got up to all sorts and was regularly on the receiving end of a scolding from Silvia. She was a strict mother who raised her voice, sent him to the corner and punished him when he had gone too far, but also consoled him when he cried and tried to protect him from the world and from those who teased him about the colour of his skin. Franco, his foster father, was more patient, willing to overlook his pranks and mediate between the boy and his wife; he was always happy to take Mario anywhere he needed to go, to scouts, the park or the parish sports centre. In the evening, it was Silvia who put him to bed. She held his hand, cuddled him and read him stories until he fell asleep, ready to return to his bedside if he woke up or had a nightmare. That was the nightly ritual until he was six. It was Silvia who took him to church and the parish sports centre, explaining that there was someone up there looking down on him and protecting him. One day, she told him about the contents of a box she jealously guarded under her bed: letters covered in blue crossings out sent from the Nazi death camps. Silvia’s mother was a German Jew, born in Wroclaw, the capital of Silesia, a region that would become part of Poland at the end of the Second World War. The love of a pilot brought her to Italy and she managed to escape racial persecution, but her sister and parents died in the death camps. This was a lesson about hatred and the Holocaust that Mario the adult would not forget when he and the rest of the Italy team visited the camps of Auschwitz and Birkenau in 2012. But we are getting ahead of ourselves. For the time being, Mario Barwuah is still a just a little boy torn between two families, his biological family and the one that offered him a home. For the first year, the consensual custody arrangement progressed smoothly. At weekends, Silvia and Franco would accompany Mario to Bagnolo Mella to spend time with Rose and Thomas, before collecting him on the Sunday. Then, little by little, something went wrong and consensual custody became legal custody by provision of the Juvenile Court in Brescia. Sometime later, Silvia would remember that ‘the support of his natural family was lacking. The only meeting we had with Mario’s parents in court was when he was four. We did not hear anything more from them’. This is a version that Mario’s birth family contests.

‘No, I spoke to him often and I would take him back to our house. Then things changed. The relationship became colder. Every time we tried to take him back’, Thomas Barwuah stated, ‘the Balotellis extended the foster agreement. We could not afford to pay for a lawyer to defend our case so Mario grew ever more distant. He did not have the time to come to visit us or his brothers and sisters. We tried for more than ten years to get him back, but the court blocked our application every time.’

This is not how Mario Barwuah Balotelli sees it. He is adamant, and said as much when he was eighteen in an interview with Sportweek, the weekly magazine with the Gazzetta dello Sport, on 4 October 1998: ‘Rose didn’t want to keep me … they gave me away. When I was with them, I spent more time in hospital than at home. Then I got better almost immediately after an operation. They say that abandonment is a wound that never heals: I say only that an abandoned child does not forget.’ He adds: ‘I have never had a good relationship with my natural parents. Now I see them two or three times a year, only because I want to see my brothers and sisters (Abigail, Enock and Angel). Whenever I see them, they are like strangers to me. I behave politely – How are you? How’s it going? Even when I was little, they didn’t do much for me, so I leave immediately and go out with my brothers and sisters. When I arrive, I say “Ciao Thomas, Ciao Rose”. When I get home and see Franco and Silvia, I say “Ciao Papà, Ciao Mamma”. It is true that my biological parents asked me to go back to them. But I really don’t think that will happen. Did they ask because I was famous? Yes, I think so. I think they wouldn’t care about me at all if I hadn’t grown up to become Mario Balotelli.’

Rose and Thomas responded in an interview with the Corriere della Sera on 12 October 2008: ‘We are not interested in the fact that he is famous now and we don’t want his money. We are lucky enough to have what we need and if Mario came to our door without a penny to his name, we would take him back. We only want him to remember that we are his parents too. We have always loved Mario and we are extremely grateful to the Balotelli family for bringing him up. But we would also like to have an affectionate relationship with him. And above all, we did not “give him away”.’

Mario Balotelli broke ties with his birth family in a harsh and cutting letter posted on his website on 5 October 2008. He wrote: ‘Following the statements made to the press by Mr & Mrs Thomas and Rose Barwuah, my biological parents, I would like to publicly clarify a couple of things. They have been described as two people who were forced to “give up their child for adoption” because they were poor and unemployed. This is not true because I was never given up for adoption (although I am now waiting to be adopted by those I consider my REAL parents) and, above all, no one forced them to abandon me in hospital when I was a newborn and to disappear during the years following my foster placement. This foster placement was requested by them and, as everyone knows, has continued until today. It was not simply down to a social worker (another stupid thing I read in the newspapers) but due to a ruling by the Juvenile Court in Brescia, which issued a decree that was also signed by my biological parents (although they now claim to have been misled). I was fostered by the Balotelli family when I was two years old and the foster placement was renewed by court decree every two years. Has anyone stopped to wonder why? Why has no one asked Mr & Mrs Barwuah – who have recently had themselves photographed for the papers looking sad, carrying a photo of me in an Inter shirt – why they never applied to the court to take me back once my health problems had been resolved? Or why for sixteen years – apart from the odd visit at the beginning thanks to the patience of my mum and dad, who would take me to see them (even though on several occasions they were not at home) – they decided to disappear until they found out I had become a Serie A footballer? Has anyone wondered what the real reason was behind why my relationship with them has “cooled”, as has been written, without even knowing what happened? For sixteen years, I didn’t even get a phone call on my birthday. After I was two, I never lived with them again. Yet now they want everyone to know that they are my “real” parents and they want my affection, as if it were a right resulting from the fact that we share the same blood. What affection? What blood ties? There are no ties, except those that bind me to the people who loved me like a son. Anyone else is a stranger to me.

‘It pains me that, despite my request to stop, they continue to give interviews, hoping to gain some kind of advantage, throwing false accusations at Mamma Silvia and Papà Franco. They were certainly not rich when they took me in; nor are they today. Papà was retired and Mamma was a housewife; they were normal people with other children. They never spoke ill of my biological parents in front of me (as has been falsely written) and still choose to remain silent and not to appear in public, for my benefit and my benefit alone. As I am expecting Mr & Mrs Barwuah to shortly begin making appeals in front of the TV cameras, I would like to state here and now that these opportunistic and belated appeals will not get a response. I repeat that I don’t think Mr & Mrs Barwuah would care about me at all if I had not become Mario Balotelli.’

What is certain, as Mamma Silvia says, is that Mario ‘like anyone else who has had a similar experience, has a hole in his heart’.

Chapter 4

Pink and Black

It was then that the fox appeared.

‘Hello,’ said the fox.

‘Hello,’ the little prince answered politely, although he could not see anything when he turned around.

‘I’m here’, said the voice, ‘under the apple tree.’

‘Who are you?’ said the little prince. ‘You are very pretty …’

‘I’m a fox,’ said the fox.

‘Come and play with me,’ the little prince offered. ‘I am so sad.’

‘I cannot play with you,’ said the fox. ‘I am not tame.’

‘Oh! I’m sorry,’ said the little prince.

But after thinking about it for a moment, he added:

‘What does “tame” mean?’

‘You are not from around here, are you?’ said the fox. ‘What are you looking for?’

‘I’m looking for men,’ said the little prince. ‘What does “tame” mean?’

‘Men’, said the fox, ‘have rifles and they hunt. It’s a real nuisance! They also breed chickens. It is the only thing they are interested in. Are you looking for chickens?’

‘No,’ said the little prince. ‘I’m looking for friends. What does “tame” mean?’

‘It is something that is all too often forgotten,’ said the fox. ‘It means “to form bonds” …’

‘To form bonds?’

‘Of course,’ said the fox. ‘For me, you are still nothing more than a little boy just like a hundred thousand other little boys. I don’t need you. And you don’t need me either. For you, I am just a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But if you tame me, we will need each other. You will be the only one in the world for me. And I will be the only one in the world for you.’

This conversation is taken from the opening of the 21st chapter of The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. It is a passage and a book of which Mario Barwuah Balotelli is very fond. He loved it and has read and reread it many times. In Year Six at junior school, he gave his teacher a wooden plaque inscribed with the words ‘What does tame mean? It means to form bonds. Thank you for taming us, Miss Tiziana. Mario, Torricella. 1996–2001’. Next to it is a drawing of the little prince with his scarf, and the fox.

Tiziana Gatti now shows off the picture proudly, but as she puts it back on the bookshelf in her Brescian home, she says: ‘I never managed to tame Mario, though.’ Sixty-eight years old, she retired three years ago after a lifetime teaching Italian, history, geography and French. Signora Gatti was Mario’s teacher throughout the time he spent at the Torricella junior school in Urago Mella, a neighbourhood in the west of Brescia.