It was not just children. The news conference to announce his signing had to be moved to a hotel, such was the crowd that gathered to see him presented as a Brescia player. The Mario Rigamonti was sold out for his first game; fans had lined up for hours to get tickets.

They were drawn by curiosity, and hope, but mainly they were captivated by the story of the prodigal son, playing out in front of their eyes. “It is not possible to ignore the image of that restless and talented child who looked at the Rigamonti from the pitch of the Oratorio in Mompiano, dreaming of Brescia,” the journalist Stefano Scacchi wrote in La Repubblica.

Balotelli had never really left Brescia, of course. He had always had the apartment, his sanctuary. The city had always been home. His only reservation was that Italian soccer had not always been quite so welcoming.

“I don’t know what sort of championship I will find,” he said on the eve of his return to Serie A. “I hope the episodes that happened years ago will not be repeated.”

The Italian Disease

It is not possible to treat Balotelli’s story as that of simply a soccer player. It is integral to its understanding that he is a black Italian soccer player or, to put it more bluntly, Italian soccer’s black player. He did not make the cover of Time because he was a talented striker; he was featured, instead, because of a cultural significance that had been ascribed to him.

As one friend puts it, in that context, what would success have looked like? Could it have been measured in goals or assists, or was it supposed to be gauged by social change? How many goals would he have had to score, how many trophies would he have had to win, to have met expectations? “He was set a task he hadn’t asked for and that nobody could complete,” the friend said.