Mario Balotelli is undoubtedly a unique individual and there is no doubt about his talent. In retrospect however, the hype around him has been greater than his end-product on the pitch.
After spending 18 months at AC Milan, Balotelli has returned to the English Premier League to join Liverpool for €20 million.
He had some moments with the Rossoneri that were worthy of a YouTube highlights really, but they weren’t enough to justify the hype that surrounded his acquisition in the first place.
The statistics look impressive at first glance but seldom tell the whole story. Balotelli scored 30 goals in 54 matches in all competitions for AC Milan, and those stats look much better when compared to the 28 goals he scored in 86 matches for Inter and 30 goals in 80 appearances with Manchester City.
The manner of how he scored those 30 goals for AC Milan must be taken to account, with a good amount of them came from dead-ball situations.
Ten of those goals were scored from the penalty spot and five of them came from direct free-kicks. To go into more depth, six of those penalties accounted for his 12 Serie A goals in the 2012-13 season and four of those free-kicks were part of his 14-goal haul in the last year’s campaign.
If you were take away those goals from dead-ball situations, Balotelli scored only 15 goals from open-play in 54 games. Those statistics do not look as impressive for someone who played as the main centre-forward for one of Italy’s biggest clubs.
Aside from his goals, Balotelli did very little in terms of movement off the ball. He was not the type of player who would drop back to help his defender or even apply pressure on opposition defenders to win the ball back quickly.
Discipline was an issue for Balotelli too, being suspended for seven matches, and collecting yellow cards like it was a hobby for either bad fouls or dissent.
His presence in the AC Milan side also reduced the impact Stephan El Shaarawy in terms of goals. El Shaarawy had scored 15 Serie A goals in the first half of the 2012-13 season. As soon as Balotelli arrived, El Shaarawy scored one more goal during that campaign.
Most observers suggested that “Il Faraone” (the Pharoah) had to track back more often because Balotelli was not working hard enough defensively, but even when AC Milan attacked Balotelli had the tendency to drift out to the left-wing, which was usually the area of the pitch El Shaarawy would be in.
Another issue with Balotelli was his impact in big matches. Most of his goals came against weak opposition and he could not make a difference against the stronger teams in Italy or in Europe.
The 2013-14 UEFA Champions League campaign was an example of this. AC Milan played Barcelona in the group stage and drew one match and lost the other. Against Atletico Madrid in the Round of 16, Los Colchoneros won both legs.
It is easy to say that AC Milan were not as strong as the Spanish teams and that Balotelli needed more support, but he is the type of player who can create something out of nothing. Players with that X-factor are indeed a rare commodity, but Balotelli has mostly blown hot and cold.
Perhaps fans and media alike have placed too much expectation on him. Balotelli is also someone who has talked himself up in the past. So fat, all he has proven is that he could talk the talk but couldn’t walk the walk.
AC Milan should not miss Mario Balotelli. The Rossoneri do need a star centre-forward but Balotelli’s lackadaisical attitude was not going to bring Milan back to greatness.
Liverpool might be able to bring the best out of him but when reflecting on his time at Milan, Balotelli’s name was always bigger than anything he gave on the pitch.
Follow Vito Doria on Twitter at: @VitoCDoria
