“Balotelli? He chased people with lighters and hairspray to set them on fire.”

Mario Balotelli’s eccentricities are well known, both on and off the pitch, throughout his career. At 31, the Italian striker plays for Adana Demirspor of the Turkish Super League, a team he joined as a free agent. After spending several years in French football, Balotelli returned to Italy, more specifically to Brescia, and that is where, as a former teammate of the Italian has announced, ‘Super Mario’ was once again the “protagonist”.

Simon Skrabb, a former Finnish midfielder for Brescia, has been interviewed by his country’s media Expressen, where he recounted Balotelli’s experiences at the Lombard club: “I immediately thought he was a good guy. At first he was a kind of captain for the team. Then the confinement came and he disappeared. He was a bit of a strange guy, chasing people with lighters and hairspray to set them on fire. You never knew what he was going to come up with “.

Skrabb and Balotelli coincided during the 2019/2020 season in the Serie A team and, although the course had a complex run due to the pandemic, the Finnish footballer’s beginnings were easier thanks to the help of the Italian. “In Brescia no one spoke English and I remember that, the first time I had Mario Balotelli as an interpreter, at the beginning everything was incredible. When I arrived it was a beautiful winter, I made my debut against AC Milan and we qualified with Finland for the Euro Cup. Then COVID arrived and everything changed, “explained the now free agent.