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- May 19, 2004
I move that we start up "The Ultimate Mario Balotelli Thread".
Roberto Mancini declared earlier this season that if Mario Balotelli were his son, he would attempt to stop the player from getting into trouble by giving him "a kick up the @#%!". Now, after newspaper photographs showed the striker leaving a Liverpool strip club at nearly 3am the day before hosting Bolton Wanderers, thereby breaking a club curfew for the second time in a matter of months, the manager suggested it was time to implement a new plan for curbing his compatriot's excesses: "Two kicks up the @#%!!" he trumpeted.Mancini was, of course, joking, speaking with the same mixture of amusement and exasperation that Balotelli tends to arouse. But the manager's intention to punish the player was real – and so, after meeting Balotelli yesterday to discuss his latest breach of discipline following a City career that has also included needless red cards and a notorious misadventure with fireworks, the manager is expected to impose the maximum permissible fine on the striker, docking him two weeks' wages. The sanction will come with a warning that if Balotelli does not mend his ways soon, he risks wasting his talent.
"This [fine] is not so much for me and for the squad – it's for him," said Mancini with almost paternal concern for the 21-year-old whom he regards as a loveable rogue but one whose roguishness must nonetheless be reined in. "When you are a professional player you should have a good private life. You can't stay out until after 2am. He needs to understand this. Now he is young but when you are 25-26 it will be different if you don't have a good private life. You can't play at the top level."