By Chris Wright
Just days after Gazetta dello Sport were quite rightly chastised for depicting Mario Balotelli as a giant, civilsation-threatening ape, a second Italian newspaper, Tuttosport, has chosen to run with an equally iffy image of the Italian striker – accompanying a picture of Balotelli ‘hulking up’ after his second goal against Germany with the headline ‘Li abbiamo fatti neri! or ‘We beat them black’, which is somewhere close to being the Italian idiom equivalent of ‘we beat them black and blue’…
While it’s not particularly offensive in the grand scheme of things (certainly not offensive as likening Balotelli to a monkey), you have to ask why Tuttosport would knowingly sail so close to the wind just days after Gazzetta dropped their sizeable bollock. The mind boggles.
Why not play it safe like Libero, who went with a nice homely illustration of Balotelli kicking German chancellor Angela Merkel’s head off under the headline ‘Vaffanmerkel’ – a satirical spin on the Italian phrase ‘Vaffanculo’, i.e, ‘go f**k yourself in the arse’…
Much better.