Mario Balotelli isn't as good at penalties as you might think - at least compared to Europe's best

The Italian, back in action and in the goals for Liverpool, once again looks to be getting back towards the Super Mario we came to know at Manchester City, and even if Steven Gerrard believes he showed captain-for-the-night Jordan Henderson ‘disrespect’ by grabbing the ball off him, had he done anything else there would have been greater cause for concern.

Had Balotelli shied away from the situation, had he accepted that Henderson was the starting XI’s first-choice penalty taker, something really would have been amiss. Balo is one of the most controversial players in the game and needs that mean, ruthless streak in him to be the best that he can. He is no less ruthless than from the penalty spot and it seems wholly bizarre that there was any question in the first place as to whether it would be him handed responsibility in such a high-pressure environment.

He has been successful with 27 out of 29 penalty attempts for club and country over the course of his career, and if it were true that he was suffering from a lack of confidence having taken 48 shots in Premier League games to find his first goal in Liverpool colours, it could have been catastrophic to undermine him.

When he was at Inter earlier in his career, he won an early penalty against Palermo, but captain Javier Zanetti took the ball off him and handed it to Samuel Eto’o. Balotelli started his walk back to the centre circle before the kick had even been scored and refused to celebrate. It is impossible to know whether that particular event made any real contribution to the path of his career, but that season did turn out to be the final one of a four-year stay at Inter.

His time at Anfield has not been the happiest so far, so there was little reason to rile him further and push him towards an early exit that has become expected in some quarters. After ignoring the protestations of Henderson and Daniel Sturridge, predictably, Balotelli calmly dispatched the penalty to give Liverpool a hugely important 1-0 lead to take to Istanbul.

Was there ever any doubt that he’d miss? He celebrated with the collectedness that we have come to expect from him, and after walking straight down the tunnel after netting the winner against Tottenham, looked back to his old self; the player that Liverpool were supposed to have bought. There are few players to be trusted from 12 yards more than Balotelli – of which Henderson certainly isn’t one – as the penalty numbers from the last six seasons across Europe’s top five leagues show.

In league games, Balo has scored 14 out of 16 spot-kicks, with both misses coming within a couple of months of each other in the early part of last season at AC Milan. His 87.5% success rate does not, however, even rank him amongst Europe’s top 10 most effective penalty takers.

Each of Dimitar Berbatov (10 from 10), Eden Hazard (17 from 17) and Ryad Boudebouz of Bastia in Ligue 1 (15 from 15) have scored with every one of their penalty attempts and Hazard in particular never truly looks like missing. The volume of penalties taken by Cristiano Ronaldo (47) makes his success rate of 93.6% that bit more impressive, while Leighton Baines’ saved spot-kick at Old Trafford earlier this season was the first he had ever missed in the league.

Of players to attempt at least 10 spot-kicks in league games since 2009, you have to go all the way down to 19th to find Balotelli who, incidentally, has the exact same success rate as Gerrard, the man who sold him down the river on national television. It would have been interesting to see what Gerrard himself had done he had been in Balotelli’s shoes.

Plenty of other top players, including Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Lionel Messi, Arjen Robben, Domenico Berardi, Falcao, Carlos Tevez and even Mark Noble, fare even better from 12 yards than Balotelli, but there was still little doubting his chances up against Cenk Gonen in front of an expectant Kop last night.

Henderson, Gerrard and Sturridge might have been amongst those to doubt the wisdom behind allowing Balotelli the freedom of the penalty spot, but very few, including Balotelli himself, would have had any concerns at all. It could even spark some of the form we know he is capable of, that has yet to be seen in Liverpool colours.