Where were you when the fun stopped?

NOT for the first time in football, we are obliged to reflect on the profound meaning of David St Hubbins’ sage observation: “It’s such a fine line between stupid and clever”.

Step forward, Mario Balotelli – and try not to fall over, there’s a good lad.

Not so super Mario was once again in everyone’s bad books this week after a spot of showboating in Manchester City’s friendly game with LA Galaxy went spectacularly wrong.

Again, David St Hubbins would know all about this, Balotelli’s public embarrassment rivalling those buttock-clenchingly hilarious moments in ‘Spinal Tap’ when a miniature Stonehenge prop descends on the stage or the bass player gets trapped, mid-song, in his sci-fi cocoon.

If you haven’t already done so, you can view Balotelli’s cock-up on ‘YouTube’; for those of you still in quill and vellum mode, with only the goalkeeper to beat, he opted to pirouette on the ball before backheeling his effort firmly and extravagantly … wide.

Result: instant substitution by an incensed Roberto Mancini who clearly didn’t buy Balotelli’s belated shot at damage limitation, as expressed in an Academy-nominated touchline mime which sought to suggest he thought he’d been flagged offside.

And Mancini wasn’t the only one less than impressed: LA Galaxy players led a chorus line of players declaring Balotelli’s actions had shown a disgraceful lack of professional respect.

Even team-mate Nigel de Jong weighed in with critical words, and when a man finds himself on the receiving end of a lecture in ethical behaviour from the assassin who felled Xabi Alonso and Hatem Ben Arfa, he must have to concede he has arrived at a very dark place, indeed.

In truth, I would argue the troubled Balotelli has actually stopped off in some much darker places in the course of his young life to date, but I have to accept to that this is a view which would cut very little ice with that venerable specimen, the Gnarled Old Pro.

Indeed, when I asked a passing Irish GOP this week what he would do to a team-mate who tried the same stunt as Balotelli pulled in LA, he thought for a moment and replied with a big smile: “I’d f***ing kneecap him.”

So then I asked him what he thought of Zinedine Zidane’s audacious penalty in the 2006 World Cup final against Italy, the one that left Buffon sitting on his ass while the ball described a gentle parabola over his head before brushing the underside of the bar and dropping into the net. “Brilliant,” he said, which of course is the right answer.

But, tellingly, there had no such certainty or immediacy in his reply when I asked him what he would have thought if the same effort had come back off the bar.

Once again, we find ourselves straddling that fine line between stupid and clever.

Of course, we must be careful here: Ballotelli is no Zidane, the latter having accumulated so much credit by that World Cup final in Berlin, courtesy of a career liberally sprinkled with instances of genius, that his reputation as one of the all-time greats would survive even the shocking moment later in the same game when, with a loss of self-control that could make Mr Madchester look like a choirboy, he didn’t so much cross the line as obliterate it.

All of which makes me wonder if there wasn’t a good deal of hysteria in the reaction to Balotelli’s blooper.

I mean, this was not the World Cup final; it was a pre-season friendly, in a galaxy far, far away, an event which would have occasioned an outbreak of mass indifference beyond the clubs involved had not our anti-hero decided to try and come over all Hollywood.

Perhaps what the incident, and the reaction, reveals most, is a line which is much more clearly defined than the one between stupid and clever. And that’s the line which separates the pro from the amateur.

How many times have you heard the one about the GOP who, having been nutmegged by some zippy tyro, takes the youth aside to warn him, “if you do that again, son, I’ll break your leg.” By contrast, the spectators are relishing the GOP’s discomfort and hoping that, the next time the kid sticks the ball through his legs, he pauses long enough to throw in a cheeky grin, before speeding on his way.

What the GOP calls “taking liberties”, the crowd calls entertainment – and sometimes it seems like never the twain shall meet. Think of that famous occasion in 1972 when Leeds United were showboating uproariously in a 7-0 humiliation of Southampton, stringing the passes together with a sequence of flicks and tricks while the poor Saints hopelessly chased shadows. For many, that passage of football is one of the golden memories of the English game in the 70s but for John Giles, who was in the thick of it, it represented the exact opposite of all he loved in the game. At 6-0 he was bored, he has said, and just wanted to come off.

Or recall too those madcap days at Fulham when Best and Marsh were hauling in the crowds at Craven Cottage, and occasionally taking time out from the competitive football to tackle each other or even sit on the ball. Not much professional respect there? But we all loved it. So the problem for Balotelli was not just that he was competing with his reputation as Mr Unloved, he was going up against a culture in the game which has almost made a fetish out of solemn professionalism.

And, if Mario learned one thing on the way to Dublin this weekend, when you’re up against killjoy opposition like that, you simply can’t afford to get it wrong.

But, whisper it, a lot of us are really glad he did.

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