So according to Mario Balotelli’s Wikipedia page, he had a trial with Barcelona when he was a kid and things like that always make me start considering what if’s. What if he did get accepted? What would a Mario Balotelli from La Masia look like?
Maybe it would it have been easier for him, growing up away from the pressures of the country he considers his home. Maybe the other boys finally make him feel accepted, valued, like he was part of something bigger. The Cantera boys take care of their own. He’s Bojan’s age and Thiago’s and Bartra’s. Maybe they be friends, becoming a team through the years. Maybe he’d tug on Bojan’s blankets at night when he’d be homesick, make fun of Thiago’s little brother and Marc’s fashion sense.
Would it influence his game? Maybe they’d teach him to track back more, attract defenders with his bulk while the others sneaked past. And when he’d finally, finally, debut for the first team, what would he feel, looking to his left to see Lionel Messi warming up then get pulled into a hug by Puyol, when his bones feel like they’re rattle out of his skin.
Our fans aren’t perfect (ask Ronaldinho), but maybe it would be easier for him to have someone with experience to talk to? Ronaldinho, Samuel, Henry, they would have taken him under their wing, made things easier for him, when he eventually did get called home to play, the pressure on the Italian coach to call up one of Barcelona’s star strikers too much to ignore any longer.
He’d be good for us too. He‘d be able to score from headers and try for goals from further out, eliminating the weaknesses that we got criticized for after Pep. I just wonder. What would Mario Balotelli be like, if he grew up in the shadow of the Camp Nou, his name sung by its voices, patching the dark hole in his chest?
It’s pretty pointless to think about and yet… I don’t know. Maybe he would have been happier for it. Or maybe things would have been exactly the same.
