There is something quietly disarming about Mario Balotelli in 2025. The man who became shorthand for wasted potential, the raised eyebrows, the heavy sighs across Italian dinner tables, is sat in the UAE playing football with his brother and sounding, frankly, more switched on than most of the people who spent years telling him what he should have been. He is 36, he is at Al Ittifaq, and he does not seem bothered by any of it. ## "Money Wasn't The Only Goal" Let's be clear about something: Balotelli did not rock up in the Middle East chasing a pay cheque. He is very direct about that. "Thank God, I'm not short of that," he says, when the inevitable Dubai-for-the-money narrative gets raised. The real pull was twofold, a project he actually believed in, and the chance to finally share a pitch with his brother Enock Barwuah. The two of them had talked about it since they were kids. Enock used to ask how they could ever play together when Mario was at Inter, Milan or City. The answer, apparently, was patience and a two-and-a-half-year contract in the UAE. "It's always been a dream, and now it's coming true," Balotelli says. You can choose to be cynical about that, but why bother? The football itself is a mixed bag by his own admission, the infrastructure is solid, the stadiums are good, but the crowds are thin and the organisation across the board needs work. He is also managing a slight leg issue and battling the heat. Not ideal. But he is training, he says things are going well, and he is clear that he will keep playing for as long as his body allows it. ## What Italy Got Wrong On the state of Italian football, three consecutive World Cup failures and counting, Balotelli cuts through the technical noise with something simpler and, honestly, more accurate than most of what gets written on the subject. Kids are not playing in the streets any more. Parks are empty. A seven-year-old today might get two hours of football every three days, where his generation were out until it was too dark to see the ball. The PlayStation and the phone have replaced the park, and with it went the organic development that no academy session can fully replicate. "I truly believe talents were born on the street and in the parks," he says. Playing against older kids, being tested, earning your place, that was the real education. It is a point that applies well beyond Italy, and anyone watching [Manchester City's recruitment strategy evolve](/uprise/football/ayyoub-bouaddi-maths-student-chess-fan-and-manchester-citys-new) in recent years will recognise the gap between technical schooling and genuine competitive instinct. On Roberto Mancini's return as Italy head coach, someone who shaped Balotelli's best years, including the Premier League and FA Cup wins at City, he is warm but not naive. He texted Mancini on his birthday. He jokes he can still play. And when asked directly whether he could return to the Azzurri, who he represented 36 times and scored 14 goals for, his answer is simple: "If I keep scoring, yes." ## Our Take We have spent years mourning a version of Balotelli that never fully arrived. Maybe that was always the wrong way to look at it. The man himself is not mourning anything, he is playing football because he loves it, building businesses for when he stops, and asking for a bit of peace and quiet after, as he puts it, "a very hectic career." That is not a cautionary tale. That is just a life.