The Bad Boys of Football: Part 1

Everyone loves a squeaky clean guy, but the ladies perpetually fall for the bad boy in the torn denim with an evil, glinting stud. Even in football, the players who take authority as a challenge are the ones who make the headlines. Nice is essentially boring. So a gentlemanly Gennaro Gattuso wouldn’t even hold a candle to the ruffian that he becomes on the field. Here’s part one of the three part series of the top three bad boys in football today.

P.S. This is not an effort to glorify behavior which is frowned upon. So please do not try these at home.

Mario Balotelli – Manchester City and Italy

The undisputed bad boy of football is the Ghanaian born Mario Balotelli. The youngster has paved his way in to the hearts of many a football fan, but mostly due to the amusement he provides. He sneers, he is disrespectful and he even gets message tees printed to get his point across. He is certainly cool, with his paper thin, colorful Mohawk and the frame of a monster, but he is a character and a half.

Why always him, you ask. Well Mario has enough escapades for a decent autobiography already. At the age of just 21, he isn’t your average happy-go-lucky footballer who is thankful to be playing at the global stage. Instead, he chooses to step on as many toes as possible. Certainly the guy is as talented as they come, and the Euro 2012 semi-final was just a glimpse of what he is capable of. But there is absolutely no stopping him when he sets out to redefine ridiculous.

Tank full of Glory

The following stories are hearsay, mostly off the net and a few from memory, and accuracy of the same is just as good as anybody’s guess. Nonetheless, I would like to presume them to be true, just because Balotelli reeks of untold potential in this particular department. Remember the time when Balotelli decided to enter a fuelling station, disembark and let everyone know that all their fuel was to be put on his tab. Gracious, of course, with the fuel prices touching the sky, but eccentric all the same.

No Parking

There is this one tale where Balotelli had just shifted to Manchester City, and parking rules were obviously below him. So he parked where he liked, and he ended up driving a car filled with parking tickets. Now the parking tickets would have amounted to an hour’s worth of his weekly pay package at the most, but something like that is cool and how.

Like a House on Fire

Balotelli obviously resided in a mansion, but things took a wrong turn when he tried to mix fireworks and domestic tapestry. The former touched the latter and it all went up in a puff of smoke. The City forward had to be rescued by firefighters and he then had to shift base to a rented hotel room. A hotel room is again full of opportunities for our protagonist, and according to a self-clicked picture, mixed an aerosol spray with a handy flame. Let’s just leave this here.

Cheque Please

Of late, the footballing world’s been quite silent and that is clearly not acceptable. So Balotelli headed to Ibiza and partied till he ran up the biggest bill ever in a bar. Now that is something, more so in Ibiza. The happy news of his baby’s birth probably gave him reason to chill out at the beach with models closing in like moths to a flame. Did you say flame?

There’s another angle to the guy, where his biological mom has now shifted to Manchester and according to a report, works as a cleaning lady to make ends meet. She doesn’t accept any of his gratitude due to a disagreement yet Mario keeps dropping in to meet his younger siblings. The fact that his swanky car stands out in that particular neighborhood is a no-brainer, but he does make the trip often is what was reported. There are clearly two sides to this coin, but for our benefit, we would like to nominate Mario Balotelli for president of the Bad Boy club, as soon as he gets on twitter that is.