When I see Mario Balotelli, I cannot help but be reminded of Nicolas Anelka. It is not so much for the way they are on the field, though there is something there, too.
During his earliest days for Arsenal, Anelka's directness and pace could take your breath away.
It was not particularly elegant, but in its short-stepping, ramrod-straight-back way, it was beautiful.
He kept proper body form, like a butler racing away with tray in hand to catch a tea cup falling from the sky.
The key, as Gerard Houllier enthused years ago, was his astounding pace with the ball at his feet, rather than without – that pace many footballers have.
It remains the most vivid image, in my mind, of Anelka: racing away behind a defence, no chance of being caught, upright so they can see his name and number clearly, and drilling a low finish into the corner.
Inevitably he used to be the punctuation mark to Arsenal’s quickest, flashiest moves: a back-heel or flick, an angled pass, a dummy and Anelka.
Balotelli, even now, is more diverse, probably even more gifted and with a broader range of skills at his disposal.
One touch on his Liverpool debut this weekend was enough proof, understated with no end result, but indisputable genius.
Facing his own goal, just inside his own half, his first instinct to a loose ball dropping over his shoulders was to gently hook the ball into space he had sensed was behind him. He cushioned it just right, effectively playing a pass to himself round the corner and he was off, attacking.
Over time, Anelka’s range of finishing expanded and it is here that Balotelli is already like him. He is not quite the bloodless finisher Anelka was for that brief period at Arsenal, but he has more ways to goal.
In any case, it is not on the field that Balotelli is reminiscent of Anelka. Of all that Anelka could have been, nothing defined him as much as his itinerancy. By the time he was 30, he was already playing for his ninth club.
Few stints lasted and each new move dimmed further the brightness that he represented when he first emerged. Balotelli has only just turned 24. Liverpool is his fifth club. Three seasons is about as long as he has stayed anywhere. It is not inconceivable for him to land up at a ninth by his 30th birthday.
Moreover, each of his past three transfers occurred with steadily dwindling goodwill and patience. Each one has increasingly taken attention away from his football and focused it squarely on his personality.
Already it has been glibly said that Balotelli is on his last chance at Anfield. The same, it comes as no surprise, was said of Anelka many times, including when he arrived at Liverpool on loan at the end of 2001. But this is not really about loyalty, an idea that Anelka brusquely dismissed around the time he was to move to Real Madrid.
“The world of professional sport is a jungle and the higher you get, the worse it is. So it’s time to stop talking about things like loyalty to a shirt. All of that, except for the national team, is over.”
Actually, this may be as much about us as them because what actually unites the two is this question: does genius need a home, not only to thrive, but to prove itself?
When we acknowledge genius, is it easier if we can appropriate it to the collective identity of a side?
We accept that Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo are geniuses, but how much does it help that both have forged such strong identities with just one or two clubs? Would they have been had they moved around every couple of seasons?
It is not straightforward, because there are counters.
Zlatan Ibrahimovic is well-travelled, now at his seventh club at 32. Nobody would dispute his genius. The Brazilian Ronaldo also played around Europe and was acknowledged as a genius most places he went.
Perhaps what set them apart was that they had spells, even if short ones, where they were at the very core of great sides. Balotelli has not had that yet, and Anelka had it only fleetingly with Arsenal.
Ultimately, though, nothing reminds me more of Anelka when watching Balotelli than the prescription the great French director Jean-Luc Godard had for Anelka and the idea that he was troubled.
“They’re just like film stars,” Godard told L’Equipe. “They want to withdraw inside their shells and to live in a closed world. If I were the boss of Paris Saint-Germain, I would have put it in Anelka’s contract that he had to be filmed at home, eating his lunch and talking to his girlfriend.
“Show it on TV and watch it get a 2 per cent rating. Then nobody would care anymore and he’d be left in peace.”
osamiuddin@thenational.ae
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