Italian vs English football: Mario Balotelli, red cards and local derbies

Currently one of Italy’s most controversial exports, Mario Balotelli is showing his brilliance at Manchester City with two goals in his last match, handing the troubled team and its coach, Roberto Mancini, a win.
Balotelli also got himself a red card and a three match suspension in the meantime, seemingly proving that everytime he scores a goal, he’ll have to spend some time on the bench, too.

Balotelli will skip his local Manchester derby today because of the suspension, and no doubt he will also be watching the fortunes of his old team, FC Internazionale, at it faces its own derby with AC Milan this weekend.

The parallel stories are keeping many Italians highly interested and amused.
On the one hand, our Italians overseas – Balotelli and Mancini – are showing their genius and weaknesses at various intervals as Mancini battles to keep a job after leaving FC Inter in controversial circumstances to move to England’s premier league; and Balotelli needing to justify the expenditure on him despite having spent a large part of the opening of the season on the bench (among some off-field antics that no good footballer would pass up these days).

In the meantime back at Italian football, the ex-club of our expatriates has plenty of work to do after an unbelievable season last year in which they won everything there was to be won, has since turned into a scrappy start to 2010 with bad performances, injuries and a general lack of inspiration.
So far we think Balotelli and Mancini will come off better than Inter in the end, but there’s a long way to go yet.