Mario Kart In Real Life, In England

Soccer fans are pretty well-acquainted with Mario Balotelli’s ongoing quest to become the Ron Artest of European soccer, but if you’re ignorant like me--guys, European soccer has a Ron Artest!

It’s out-crazy yourself after setting a house on fire with fireworks, but damnit, Mario Balotell’s doing his best. Today The Daily Mail brings us the story of his garden-turned race track:

Manchester City striker Mario Balotelli has turned the garden of his mansion into a race track. ... The 21-year-old Italian is apparently keen of tearing up his land on a quad bike.

A source told The Sun: “Mario absolutely loves playing sport, whether it’s football, swimming, karate or judo. But with the quad bike he has the speed too. He’s moved from an apartment block to a country house and has been tearing around now there’s no one to complain about the noise. He’s like a big kid. His girlfriend Raffaella doesn’t get it at all though.”

And here’s a photo of his “quad bike” aka the real-life Mario Kart go cart.

You can see more photos of the cart and Balotelli’s house/race track at The Daily Mail. In the meantime, I have a brand new reason to start watching Man City, and someone really needs to show Mario this video and the sit back and wait for him to re-enact it. Cool? Cool.