Around Europe: It’s not always Mario Balotelli as Nice collective continues to shine

In this week's Around Europe column, Ian Hawkey focuses on Mario Balotelli – thriving in a Nice team that remains relevant in the Ligue 1 title race.

Mario Balotelli has scored 13 Ligue 1 goals for Nice this season. Valery Hache / AFP

Just ahead of last Sunday’s first round of French presidential elections, some spoof posters appeared on billboards in the Mediterranean city of Nice.

They had a single theme. “Vote OGC Nice” was the most obvious, OGC being the acronym for Olympique Gymnaste Club, the formal title of Nice, currently the third best football club in France.

“Veni, Vidi, Seri” trumpeted another poster, celebrating Jean-Michael Seri, the Ivorian midfielder. “Generation Koziello,” read another, praising Vincent Koziello, Seri’s partner in Nice’s midfield. There was also a poster for the man who is ... well, Nice’s standout poster-boy. “Mario Balotelli,” it stated, “Calm Strength.”

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Calm? Balotelli? It is an unusual description of the Italian striker who made the south of France the latest stop-off in a career of dramatic ups and downs last summer.

Yet it is not misplaced. There have been enough cool, calm moments in front of goal to mark out this season as the best, and happiest, Balotelli has enjoyed for a while.

Nice and their poster-producing fans are grateful to him for significant contributions in a journey to what will be the club’s best finish in France’s top flight for over 40 years.

The club will take at least third place in the final league table, and with that earn a shot at an unprecedented spot in the group phase of the next Uefa Champions League.

They may finish higher if their showdown with Paris Saint-Germain, title-holders and second in Ligue 1, goes their way on Sunday.

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Mario Balotelli in action for Nice. Eric Gaillard / Reuters

Any slogan that celebrates Balotelli’s calm power is novel given the catalogue of controversies that followed the player through his prodigious youth at Inter Milan, his time at Manchester City, that peppered his periods as an AC Milan player and the impotent spell at Liverpool, who let him go free to Nice.

“Why Always Me?” were the words Balotelli once had printed on a T-shirt he wore, very publicly, as headlines kept being generated around him while he was in England.

At Nice, they fondly, proudly insist: “It’s not always Mario”.

Yes, Balotelli’s 15 goals have given the team an important push, often at crucial times, but one satisfaction Swiss manager Lucien Favre can take from his first management job in France is how Nice have functioned as a collective.

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Mario Balotelli’s infamous ‘Why Always Me?’ T-shirt. Andrew Yates / AFP

Favre had a tough task when he arrived. Nice had finished fourth in Ligue 1 last May, a significant uplift and heady heights for a club operating on a budget that barely put them in the top half of Ligue 1’s economic table.

But from the Nice of 2015/16 significant players had moved on, like striker Valere Germain, who went to Monaco; midfielder Nampalys Mendy, who departed for Leicester City, and Hatem Ben Arfa, the mercurial forward whose renaissance at Nice had led PSG to hire him on a superstar salary.

Balotelli came in to replace Ben Arfa, like for like in that he is a maverick with match-winning qualities but question marks over his reliability.

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Mario Balotelli arrived at Nice following a dismal spell at Liverpool. Laurence Griffiths / Getty Images

The club have made the most of Balotelli’s marketability, and assumed certain risks. His wages are by far Nice’s highest.

His form had been poor. His season at Liverpool had yielded one Premier League goal; his subsequent loan year at Milan had produced a single Serie A goal.

Balotelli promptly scored five times in his first three Ligue 1 matches, two of those benchmark-setting wins over Marseille and Monaco.

Since then, the itinerant Italian has suffered injury absences and a pair of red cards and suspensions, but has run into form again in the last month or so, the period that saw Nice, who led the league for a third of the season, assure themselves at least bronze in the current season.

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Mario Balotelli’s inconsistent form has affected his place within the Italy set-up. Claudio Villa / Getty Images

Balotelli has also learned it need not always be about him. The goals of Allasane Plea and Wylan Cyprien were as valuable as Balotelli’s as Nice set the pace in Ligue 1. When Plea and Cyprien were both struck with injury, Mikael Le Bihan, who had been out recovering from a serious leg fracture for 17 months, popped up with important strikes.

“We have kept pace with two big juggernauts in French and European football,” said Favre of the pursuit of PSG and league-leaders Monaco. “We intend to give our maximum to continue doing that.”

Player of the week: Keita Balde, Lazio

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Barely had he left the field last weekend after celebrating the first senior hat-trick of his professional career than Keita Balde Diao was looking ahead to Sunday’s Rome derby. “Now to try and get a goal against Roma,” declared the Senegal international winger.

Three in a trice

If ever a man had momentum ahead of the capital’s big collision, it is the 22-year-old. His three goals in the 6-2 demolition of Palermo at the Stadio Olimpico broke a record that has stood in Serie A for over 40 years for the swiftness of his blitz. Balde’s hat-trick — the first with his right foot, the last with his left, and a penalty in between — took five first-half minutes.

Coming of age

It also took the hugely talented, sometimes enigmatic striker to double figures for the league campaign in terms of goals. It is an important threshold, after three previous Serie A seasons — he scored 10 goals in all three league campaigns combined — in which Balde mixed some thrilling performances with too many flat ones. He has also established himself as an international this season, starring for Senegal at the Africa Cup of Nations in January.

Barcelona boy

His progress with Lazio, who are fourth in Serie A and look forward to next month’s Italian Cup final against Juventus thanks to knocking out Roma in the semi-finals, has been noted in Catalunya, Spain. He was born, the son of Senegalese parents, in the region and had enrolled at Barcelona’s fabled La Masia academy by the age of 10. He might be a Barca player today, but for some clashes with his bosses there, while he was making his way up the youth ranks.

Restless spirit

Barcelona, apparently unhappy about disciplinary issues, sent him to play at lower-ranked neighbours Cornella at 15, and when he refused to come back, confident he could find a major employer elsewhere, Barca were said to be unimpressed. Lazio were the lucky beneficiaries, signing for €300,000 (Dh1.2 million) a player they now value at €30m.

Uncertain future

Balde’s present Lazio contract expires in 2018, and Lazio suspect an extension may be a tricky negotiation. Club and player were at odds last summer about his long-term commitment, with head coach Simone Inzaghi casting doubt publicly about his attitude when he missed the first match of the season. That relationship has improved over the last nine months, but as admiring glances are cast towards a footballer with pace, skill and growing confidence, Lazio may chose to cash in.

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