What’s Wrong With Mario Balotelli?
By Nick Burgess
@NickBurgess92
Getty Images
At one time, Mario Balotelli was one of the most feared strikers in Europe. An elite youth product who came through the Inter Milan academy, Balotelli was quick, strong, technical and had a very good reading of the game. After breaking into the first team at Inter, he scored 10 goals in all competitions before being shipped off to Manchester City.
Donning the sky blue shirt, Balotelli scored 21 goals in 61 appearances. This was often due to him taking a backseat to Sergio Aguero and Edin Dzeko during the campaigns, but he was still a good third option. During his time with the Citizens, Balotelli only registered one assist. It was to Aguero to score the dramatic winning goal against Queens Park Rangers to seal the first-ever Premier League title for Manchester City, but that was the only assist he had in the Premier League.
Seeking first team football, Balotelli headed back to his native Italy, this time joining the other Milan club, AC Milan. For the Rossoneri, he twice registered double-digit goals, but this did not help Milan as they finished in eighth place, failing to qualify for the Champions League and ending up 45 points behind Serie A winner Juventus.
Balotelli moved back to England after his poor season with Milan, but this time headed for Anfield to play for Liverpool. Balotelli was brought in to help alleviate the pressure on Daniel Sturridge to make up for the 31 goals scored last season by the prolific Luis Suarez. Balotelli, though, has continued his poor form, and has failed to score for Liverpool yet this season.
So what is wrong with Balotelli? The first issue is with supply. To be a good striker, you need to be fed quality passes into dangerous areas. He had this at Manchester City with world-class players in Yaya Toure, David Silva, Aguero and Dzeko. These are all players with great vision and awareness who could get the ball into the feet or onto the head of Balotelli. He lacked this at Milan, with an aging Keisuke Honda being really the only quality option next to the young Stephen El Shaarawy.
The next issue with Balotelli is his conversion rate. A larger percentage of his goals come from penalties and free kicks, both situations in which he is fluent and effective. At Liverpool, he takes a backseat on both of those duties to club captain Stephen Gerrard, so those goals must be removed from his possible tally.
When you remove his set pieces, Balotelli had the worst conversion percentage in Europe last season, scoring on only 13.3 percent of his shots for Milan. This is bad news for a Liverpool squad who just lost their star striker Sturridge for another month after damaging his hamstring in training.
What Balotelli can do, however, is create chances. He created 84 at Inter and another 52 at Milan, which will be a huge asset to both Raheem Sterling and Sturridge upon his return to the side.
Brought in for only £16 million pounds, Balotelli was seen as a steal by many upon hearing of his transfer to northern England; but now, with his lack of goals, assists, squandering of chances and lack of work rate, that price looks a little too high.
Nick Burgess is a soccer columnist for www.RantSports.com. Follow him on Twitter @NickBurgess92, “Like” him on Facebook and connect with him on Google.
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