By Philip Pullella
 |
| Italy's national soccer team player Mario Balotelli looks on at the end of a training session at Coverciano training centre near Florence February 4, 2013. Credit: Reuters/Max Rossi |
(Reuters) - Silvio Berlusconi and his
brother Paolo are getting heat over maverick Italy striker Mario Balotelli,
with one accused of racism and the other of signing him for their club AC Milan
only to win votes in this month's national election.
Paolo Berlusconi, AC Milan's vice
president, was lambasted in social media after calling former Manchester City
forward Balotelli "the little black boy of the family".
A video of his
comments, made on Sunday after a political event, was going viral after it was
posted on various websites, including Tuttosport (www.tuttosport.com).
"And now let's go and watch the
little black boy of the family, the crazy head," Paolo Berlusconi says in
the video.
A spokesman for the Serie A club said
on Wednesday there would be no comment on the video, which was recorded on the
day Balotelli made his debut for AC Milan after being transferred from English
Premier League club City last month.
Criticism of Paolo Berlusconi's remarks
took off after foreign media began writing about the video, which had received
relatively little attention in the Italian press in the past few days.
"Balotelli is back in Italy for 2
minutes and already had racist comments made about him. Why do black players
even play in Italy?," one person tweeted.
Other tweets slammed the comments as
"appalling", "gross" and "idiocy".
Balotelli, playing three days after
leaving City, scored both goals in Milan's 2-1 home victory over Udinese on
Sunday.
UNDER FIRE
After making the "little black
boy" remark, Paolo Berlusconi told his listeners at the event for a local
centre-right candidate: "All the young ladies are invited as well - you
can even have a chance to meet the president" - an apparent reference to
his older brother Silvio, who is club president.
While Paolo was taking the heat for his
comments, Silvio Berlusconi was still under fire over his motivation for
bringing the hot-tempered Balotelli back to Italy in the first place, having
previously said Milan did not need a "rotten apple".
For the past week, former prime minister
Silvio has been the regular butt of jokes by comedians and attacks by his
political rivals over the transfer, which they see as a clear attempt to woo
Italian soccer fans to vote for his centre-right coalition.
Last week L'Unita, the paper of the main
centre-left party, said nationwide fans of Milan, who won the Italian
championship in 2011 but are now fourth in the Serie A standings, could
influence about 1.3 percent of the vote.
L'Unita said thrusting Balotelli into
the election campaign was "the devil's touch", a play on words
because Milan's mascot is a red-and-black devil.
Another paper said the move was so
blatantly political that it called Balotelli "Candidate Mario," in an
editorial.
MONKEY CHANTS
Balotelli is no stranger to racism,
real or perceived.
He was born in Sicily to Ghanaian
parents and given up for adoption to an Italian family at the age of three. He
grew up in northern Italy and became an Italian citizen at 18.
Both in Italy and during the 2012
European soccer Championship co-hosted by Poland and the Ukraine he endured
monkey chants and bananas thrown on the pitch.
He seemed to anger racist fans more
than other black players in Italy, precisely because he is Italian and not a
foreigner.
When Balotelli played for Inter Milan,
rival Juventus fans once shouted: "There are no black Italians."
Last month Silvio Berlusconi defended
his players for walking off the pitch during a friendly match against lower
division team Pro Patria, when Ghanaian midfielder Kevin-Prince Boateng and two
of his team mates were subjected to monkey chants and jeers from opposition
fans.
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