Next Puskas Award winner? Mario Balotelli's epic rabona might be 2022's best goal | OneFootball

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GiveMeSport

·2 January 2023

Next Puskas Award winner? Mario Balotelli's epic rabona might be 2022's best goal

Article image:Next Puskas Award winner? Mario Balotelli's epic rabona might be 2022's best goal

Mario Balotelli certainly has the skills to pay the bills.

While ‘Super Mario’ sadly hasn’t gone onto become one of the world’s finest players as he once promised to, nobody has ever been under any illusion that he doesn’t have the talent in his locker to produce truly extraordinary moments.


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It’s fair to say that for all the reasons Balotelli‘s career has petered out that his technical flair certainly isn’t one of them.

And that means no matter where Balotelli goes in what is fast-becoming a journeyman’s life that he will never be far away from producing a moment of magic that makes him go viral again.

Balotelli could decide to see out his playing days in the fifth tier of Papua New Guinean football – if there is such a thing – and you can rest assured that he’ll still deliver something worthy of worldwide attention along the way.

Article image:Next Puskas Award winner? Mario Balotelli's epic rabona might be 2022's best goal

Could Balotelli win the Puskas Award?

In fact, we all got a taste for that reality of Balotelli’s career when he scored an astonishing goal for Adana Demirspor in May 2022 that might well bag him the FIFA Puskas Award.

The former Italy international might not have been on the back page of every newspaper around the world when he was plying his trade in Turkey, but boy did said goal against Göztepe S.K make waves across social media.

And with the next edition of The Best FIFA Football Awards – at which the Puskas Award will be given out – set to take place on February 27, we thought that it would be rude not to revisit Balotelli’s masterpiece.

It was, after all, one of the most remarkable footballing moments of 2022 with the ex-Manchester City hero literally scoring a rabona off the back of a flurry of step-overs as part of a five-goal haul.

Even by Balotelli’s standards, it doesn’t get much crazier than that, so be sure to check out what could well be crowned as the best goal of the year in just a few weeks’ time.

Video: Balotelli’s extraordinary Puskas Award contender

You know it’s got a decent shot of lifting the silverware when even FIFA retweeted a video of it with the hashtag ‘Puskas’!

Who has won the Puskas Award before?

If Balotelli, who now plays for Sion in Switzerland, does indeed win the Puskas Award for his insanely skilful effort then he will join an eclectic club of world-renowned stars and lesser-known heroes in having his goal heralded as the best of the year.

Cristiano Ronaldo won the inaugural prize for his long-range scorcher against FC Porto in 2009, while the likes of Neymar, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Mohamed Salah and Olivier Giroud have also gotten their hands on the prize.

Article image:Next Puskas Award winner? Mario Balotelli's epic rabona might be 2022's best goal

Erik Lamela is the current holder, following in the footsteps of his then-Tottenham Hotspur teammate Heung-min Son, courtesy of a rabona goal of his own scored against Arsenal in 2021.

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