Backheel Balotelli
In spite of my previous denouncement of analysis of friendly games, I can’t help but find myself wanting to comment on Mario Balotelli’s latest cognitive failure. With his name already on the scoresheet against LA Galaxy, clean through on goal, the Italian inexplicably opted for an audacious backheel instead of the simple finish the chance warranted.
The crowd jeered. Edin Dzeko berated his team mate. Manager Roberto Mancini immediately substituted Balotelli, and he can only have been making an example of him because the game was barely thirty minutes old. Balotelli was apoplectic with his manager, and apparently claimed that he thought he was offside. I don’t know why he would have thought that; you are taught to play to the whistle, and if you watch the move from David Silva’s neat through-ball you’ll see Balotelli had plenty of time before he lined up his ludicrous shot. Besides, even if he was offside, the backheel would have been a strange thing to do. It’d have to be very strange to be beyond Balotelli, of course, but still.
I wonder what the reaction would have been had Balotelli actually managed to convert with his odd pirouette. Perhaps he would have been lauded, and the incident become a viral hit for all the right reasons, like Yossi Benayoun’s little piece of magic against Wycombe Wanderers earlier this month. Perhaps he would still have been vilified, like the United Arab Emirates’ unfortunate Theyab Awana, whose backheel came from the penalty spot in a friendly against Lebanon. Awana was also substituted by his manager, and may even face sanctions from his own football association for his show of ‘disrespect’.
To be honest, I think there’s a time and a place for showboating, and it’s during five-a-side sessions on the training ground. I’m all for using skill to beat an opponent, but I do agree that there’s something disrespectful about an ostentatious show of skill just for the sake of showing everyone you can. Even the Brazilians agree with me; the reaction this amazing passage of play, starting with Kerlon’s seal dribble and ending abruptly with Coelho’s brutal intervention, saw the defender banned for five games but the forward censured for ‘showing off’. In a similar incident, Cristiano Ronaldo was chopped in half by Middlesbrough’s James Morrison, with Boro’s manager Gareth Southgate saying afterwards “Morrison did what a lot of us want to do.” Not to defend the extreme reactions – Coelho was lucky to get away with a lighter punishment than Ben Thatcher did, and Southgate’s escape of any kind of warning from the Football Association was ridiculous – but people don’t like to be humiliated, and it prompts visceral, unreasonable reactions.
I think it’s a good thing to see the unexpected on a football pitch. In general the Premier League gets along just fine without much flair, but it’d be good to see a bit more of it. That’s why it’s a good thing that the talented Mario Balotelli plays in our country; because he’s capable of tricks most of us can only dream of pulling off. But it’s also important he learns when to attempt the seemingly impossible, and make sure it benefits his team. The club shelled out £22.5m for the forward last summer, and while he did chip in with a handy ten goals, he also received eleven yellow cards, got sent off twice, crashed his car, had some public disagreements with his team mates and management, flirted with Milan and threw a dart at a youth team player. I sometimes think certain incidents wouldn’t gain so much exposure if it Mario Balotelli wasn’t the perpetrator, but he really doesn’t help himself. It’s fair to say that if Mancini chooses to perform a disappearing trick of his own on Balotelli, not many neutral fans would shed any tears.
