After three years, 31-year-old Mario Balotelli once again appeared in the training roster of the Blues, and "Ba Shen" returned. Italy did not schedule a warm-up match on the following national team matchday, and Balotelli will travel from Turkey to the national team station for a three-day training camp.
Balotelli and Mancini
As soon as the news came out, netizen fans reflected the same, and they said that they quickly ordered a song of "My Old Father" to give to Mancini - regardless of the early acquaintance at Inter, ten years ago, manchester city was everyone in the eyes, mancini for the stubborn Balotelli is really worthy of a big love without boundaries. Even if they have fought the training ground, not many people interpret it as the general is out of harmony, and most of them think Lao Tzu disciplines his son, what's wrong? ”
Balotelli and Mancini, on 30 May 2018, the Italian team prepares for a friendly match
Not a father, but a father. Mancini's affection for Balotelli is deeper than the outside world thinks. However, after the End of the Manchester City period, Mancini went to Galatasaray, Inter Milan and Zenit, but did not take Balotelli with him. In 2018, Mancini took office in the Italian national team, leading the team to recruit Balotelli to play in the first warm-up match, and Ba Shen also competed for the "Asian Father" to contribute his first goal after taking office. However, in the back, Balotelli began to drift again, the state was ups and downs, and out of the position of the national team manager, it was obviously not suitable to recruit him to the team.
In 2014, a year after Mancini left Manchester City, Balotelli went to Liverpool. After two years of staying, the cooperation between the two sides was not very pleasant. After 2016, Ba Shen stopped in Nice, Marseille, Brescia (then a Serie A promotion horse) and Serie B Monza. There are occasional flashes of work, but it is not stable and long-lasting, so the platform that stays all the way down. Last year, he simply left the big five leagues and went to the Adana Demir Sports team in the Turkish Super League. This team is currently ranked fourth in the Turkish Super League table, and Balotelli has 8 goals and 3 assists in 19 games, temporarily ranking 9th in the top scorer list, but there is also some sense of existence.
12-13 Premier League, Manchester City against Liverpool, Mancini coached Balotelli on the sidelines
In recent years, some national teams in Europe have not narrowed their vision, even if they travel far away to play on other continents, they can also be within the scope of the national team manager's inspection, quite a bit of "heroes do not ask the source" style. For example, in 2016, Gignac had gone from Ligue 1 to play for the Mexican Tigers, and was still pulled by Deschamps to play in the European Cup, and the final also played a goalpost; for example, Carrasco, Vizell, Sharawi and Pele have played in the Chinese Super League in recent years, which has not affected Belgium and Italy to recruit them into the big list. Playing in the Turkish Super League is not an obstacle to Ba Shen's return to the Italian team, and we cannot say that Mancini recruited a Turkish Super League player into the national team out of selfishness.
For the return to the national team, Balotelli is indeed very positive - "if you can recruit me to play in the play-offs, I am willing to walk back from Turkey to Italy, let me play right-back". But it is easy to enter the national team training list, and it is another thing to enter the play-off roster to compete with Portugal and Turkey for World Cup tickets. If you want to stay in the national team until March, you still have to talk about the training performance and the league performance in the next period of time.
Playing Portugal by Bashi?
Mancini recruited Balotelli, of course, not to relive the "father-son relationship". Do you really want to reminisce about the past, make a phone call and have a meal or not be finished? His aim is to pick strikers. Chieza Jr.'s long absence from the team with a ligament injury means that the Blues have lost the frontcourt tiger who can best perform in the strong dialogue in the European Championship victory journey. Inmobile, Berardi and others are famous, eating weak teams is no problem, but if the ability to fight hard battles is really so reliable, it will not be the turn of Little Chiesa.
Little Chiesa
The next World Cup play-offs are obviously no less than the big scene of the European Cup knockout rounds, both games have to show their real skills to fight for their lives to be able to go to Qatar, and then Chiesa Jr. can't play... This is the reality before Mancini. Therefore, he had to find a way to solve it, at least in his hands, there were a few more frontal cadres with use value.
Looking at this issue of the Italian squad, in addition to Balotelli (8 goals, ninth in the top scorers of the Turkish Super League), there are also -
Immobile (Serie A 17 goals, second in the top scorers list);
Berardi (Serie A 10 goals, fifth in the top scorers list);
João Pedro (Brazilian naturalized player, who just qualified for Italy in January and currently scored 10 league goals in Cagliari, seventh in the top scorers list, and entered the senior national team for the first time at the age of 29);
Scamaka (Sassuolo's second top scorer after Berardi, 9 goals in Serie A, tenth in the top scorers list);
When I was a child, I had a lot of holidays, May 1 was Labor Day, June 1 was Children's Day, July 1 was the birthday of the Communist Party, August 1 was the birthday of the Communist Army, October 1 was the birthday of Communist China, and New Year's Day and Spring Festival, because my father was a northerner, and these days I could eat buns or dumplings.
At present, all the Italians and "new Italians" in the top ten of the Serie A top scorers are here. The others are either Serbian, Argentine, or English... If you want to move, you can't do it.
Mancini is worried about the problem of the striker, so in addition to scavenging the list of Serie A goalscorers, he also thinks of Balotelli, who is currently playing well in the Turkish Super League. I don't know if Mancini has hesitated, maybe he hesitated after thinking about it, and finally felt: dead horses should be live horse doctors, try it.
In any case, the last World Cup goal of the Italian national team was precisely what Balotelli scored. In the first round of the group stage of the 2014 Fifa World Cup in Brazil, Balotelli scored the second goal of the team in the 50th minute, and they beat England 2-1 on the spot. Italy lost 0-1 to Costa Rica and Uruguay in the second and third rounds respectively, and the group finished third... And then it's time to leave the World Cup so far.
Balotelli's return to the national team is indeed remarkable, but it is not yet a "good story" degree, just an examination. If you can turn around and shoot a 30-meter blast in the play-off final, Ronaldo (or maybe Turkey?). Kicking out the World Cup — like the kick he made Neuer dumbfounded — and then ripping off his shirt and rushing to the sideline to hug the tearful Mancho is a great story.