What rich fools will rid Liverpool of Mario Balotelli?
Liverpool are panicked by the sight of Mario Balotelli returning from his season-long loan at AC Milan.
Balotelli joined Liverpool for £16million on a three-year, £125,000-a-week deal from AC Milan in August 2014. In his time at Liverpool, the Italian striker has scored four goals.
Balotelli’s contract offers him the option of a fourth year when this deal runs out.
Understandably, current Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp wants shot of the overpaid Italian signed by his predecessor, Brendan Rodgers, now the Celtic boss, who opined in 2014: “I think to get someone of that quality in this market is a very good deal for us.”
Balotelli cost Manchester City £22.5m when he signed from Internazionale in 2010. He was sold to Milan for £19m and to Liverpool for £16m. It was a risky singing, which Rodgers acknowledged.
But Rodgers and the Liverpool transfer committee should have paid more heed to José Mourinho, his old boss who coached Balotelli at Inter.
“We went to play Rubin Kazan in the Champions League. All my other strikers were injured. No Diego Milito, no Samuel Eto’o,” recalled Mourinho. “I was really in trouble. Mario got a yellow card in the 42nd minute and when I got into the dressing room at half-time I spent 14 minutes of the 15 available speaking to Mario. I said to him: ‘Mario, I can’t change you, I have no strikers on the bench, don’t touch anybody and play only the ball. Mario, if someone provokes you, don’t react. If we lose the ball, no reaction. If the referee makes a mistake, no reaction…. The 46th minute: red card.”
Klopp has seen and heard enough.
“He’s not at the stage of his career where he should be battling with four or five players for one or two positions,” says Klopp. “So it’s clear we need a solution. There will be a club who would be happy to have the new Mario Balotelli.”
But will there be a club willing to cough up a big whack of cash and pay the likeable lunk half a million pounds a month?
As Mario Sconcerti put it in Corriere della Sera, Balotelli possesses “the strange talent of making everyone happy when he arrives and even happier when he leaves”.
Posted: 14th, July 2016 | In: Back pages, Liverpool, Sports Comment (1) | TrackBack | Permalink
