Italian newspaper caricatures Balotelli as King Kong

As reports of racist chants inside the stadium surround EURO 2012, Italy’s best-selling sports paper, La Gazzetta dello Sport, decided to publish a cartoon showing Mario Balotelli acting as a giant gorilla King Kong.

Balotelli has already stated ‘he would leave the pitch and go home if he was subjected to any racial abuse,’ but maybe he didn’t expect it to come from his own country

He has already been targeted by Croatian fans with monkey chants, and this comes quickly after police confirmed they are investigating the racial abuse of Ashley Cole and Ashley Young on Twitter.

The Guardian Stated:

The cartoonist, Valerio Marini, was trying to project the image of Balotelli dominating England during the quarter?final in Kiev on Sunday, when Roy Hodgson’s team lost on penalties. Gazzetta, Italy’s largest-selling sport newspaper, has accepted, however, that the cartoon “maybe wasn’t the cartoonist’s best work”.

“In these times we need to show greater moderation, caution and good taste but we have always fought against racism, and condemned booing against Balotelli as unacceptable.”