Over half a decade has passed since Balotelli’s last appearance for Italy, during which he earned 36 caps and scored 14 goals. Presently a member of the Turkish team Adana Demirspor, he has had a promising beginning since joining in September, netting three times in five Super Lig outings. The 33-year-old expresses confidence and contends that coach Luciano Spalletti should contemplate his inclusion in the national team.<\/p>\n
“If I\u2019m well, I still consider myself the strongest,” he said . “Did [Giacomo] Raspadori and [Gianluca] Scamacca play [against Ukraine]? How many shots did they take combined? Two? I want to recover and play for the national team. I always hope for the call. I met Spalletti and I\u2019ve met him several times. We made some jokes when we met in a friendly with Napoli, but I have no relationship.”<\/p>\n
Italy came close to missing out on a place at Euro 2024 as a goalless draw with Ukraine in their last qualifying match saw them edge their opponents to second in the group.\u00a0Ukraine felt they should have been given a penalty in the dying minutes of the game, which could have resulted in the Azzurri crashing out. Spalletti had few options available when it came to an out-and-out striker to choose for his starting XI, with Raspadori, Scamacca and Moise Kean the only candidates to take on the role.<\/p>\n
It will likely take something special for Balotelli to convince Spalletti to give him a call-up to the squad ahead of Euro 2024. The striker has had a career full of ups and downs, having had spells at AC Milan, Inter, Manchester City, Liverpool and Marseille, among many other clubs<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Over half a decade has passed since Balotelli’s last appearance for Italy, during which he earned 36 caps and scored 14 goals. Presently a member of the Turkish team Adana Demirspor, he has had a promising beginning since joining in September, netting three times in five Super Lig outings. The 33-year-old expresses confidence and contends […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":7539,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[175],"tags":[389,388],"class_list":["post-7538","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports","tag-balotelli","tag-italy"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7538","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7538"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7538\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7704,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7538\/revisions\/7704"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7539"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7538"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7538"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7538"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}