Mario Balotelli will attempt to revive his career at OGC Nice

There have been bigger transfers this summer; there have been more expensive ones. But there haven’t been many more intriguing, both in implications for the present and possibilities for the future, than Mario Balotelli’s free transfer to Nice. And not just because he’ll snap Twitter in half if he takes the 69 shirt.

By reputation, by status — as a brand, if you like — Balotelli remains one of the biggest players in the world. Yet the brand is more or less all there is left: in the last two seasons, at Liverpool and then at AC Milan, he’s played 51 games and scored just seven goals. At 26 years old he should be at or close to his peak; instead, he’s passed through Internazionale, Manchester City, AC Milan (twice) and Liverpool, coming out the other side as either a punchline or a cautionary tale, depending who you’re asking and how kindhearted they’re feeling. A talent gone wrong, somewhere along the line. Perhaps several somewheres.

Which is how a player that Roberto Mancini once said could become one of the best players in the world ends up at Nice -- a proud and long-established club in a beautiful city but not, we would venture to say, where Mancini saw Balotelli, or Balotelli saw himself, at 26. Inspired by Hatem Ben Arfa last season they finished fourth in Ligue 1, a mere two points behind Monaco and Lyon in second and third, respectively.

Perhaps the Ben Arfa example is instructive here. Though different players and personalities, there are echoes of something similar in their paths to the French Riviera, once a traditional destination for convalescents. Ben Arfa, lauded as a prodigy as a teenager, had shown flickers of genius throughout his career at Lyon, Marseille and Newcastle but with each club, his timed ended acrimoniously, and come 2014-15 he found himself exiled on loan to Hull City, struggling for form, fitness and motivation. A move to Nice in January fell through but he finally made the switch for 2015-16, and arrived a man reborn. One season, 18 goals and countless did-you-see-that Vines later, he’d earned himself a move to Paris Saint-Germain.

There is clearly a benefit to escaping from a context in which one is unwanted and unloved. Talking to the Guardian after his return from France, Ben Arfa said that by the end of his time with Newcastle and Hull, he felt “like a prisoner. I had the feeling of being locked in a dark place without a door. I saw hell.” And then, after taking six months off to clear his head and moving back to France: “I’ve found some kind of inner peace. This is the first time in my life I’ve felt as serene in my head.”

Can Nice have the same effect on Balotelli that it did on Ben Arfa? It’s tempting to get speculative that perhaps the biggest benefit might be the altered size and scale of the club. Balotelli, broadly speaking, has been at big clubs — in terms of expectation if not always, at least during his time there, achievement — and so borne the simultaneous pressures of competition for places and the need to get consistent results. Clearly such a context suits some players; we might conclude, after all these years, that it’s not always the best for Balotelli. Being a big fish in a small pond may not be best way to win everybody’s respect, but it does sound kind of fun.

The other thing to bear in mind here is that while Nice were pretty close to second and third last season, they were a remarkable 33 points behind PSG in first place. From this we can draw many conclusions about the general state of things, but perhaps the most important is that Ligue 1 is not the strongest league in the world, and is in fact precisely the kind of competition in which a striker — if he’s in the mood — could fill his boots, his families boots and the boots of all his friends.

And that’s a prospect that also sounds like fun. As entertaining as Balotelli is when he’s setting his bathroom on fire, there’s been something deeply sad about watching him repeatedly drift to the fringes of squad after squad. It doesn’t suit him, and it doesn’t do much for anybody else either. There is nothing more frustrating in football than wasted talent, and the flipside of that is that there are few things as fundamentally joyful as watching talent fulfilled. SB Nation soccer is happy to go on the record here and say that Balotelli bashing in 35 goals this season is precisely what we are here for.