ENGLISH PREMIER LEAGUE: RICHARD WILLIAMSon how the antics of his petulant striker reflects poorly on the club's manager
ROBERTO MANCINI may pay a high price for wasting €28 million on Mario Balotelli He kicked the turf, he kicked a goalpost, he kicked opponents. He kicked everything except, in any meaningful sense, the ball.
Mario Balotelli was a catastrophe waiting to happen all afternoon and, when he was finally expelled from the pitch, he took Manchester City’s remaining hopes of staying in the title race with him.
His season ended yesterday and so did City’s. The latest addition to his record of indiscipline ensures he will not be seen again in the present campaign, and perhaps never again in a City shirt.
Should that be the case, he will take his place in the history of the club as the individual who symbolised their failure to provide Sheikh Mansour, right, with the anticipated return for a billion euros’ worth of investment, despite leading the table for 28 matches.
Roberto Mancini knows a gifted footballer when he sees one but he badly overestimated his own ability to curb Balotelli’s petulance and harness an undoubted talent to City’s advantage. After a week in which the 22-year-old had once again made unpleasant tabloid headlines, the manager gave him the chance to help keep the club’s season alive.
Instead Balotelli did everything he could to undermine their efforts.
“I finished my words for him today,” Mancini said afterwards, sounding pretty definitive.
“I love him. I love the guy, I love him as a player. At this moment I am very sorry for him because if he continues like this he will lose his quality, his talent. In my life I have seen many players like this and, when they do not change, they lose their talent within two or three years. He must change. I hope he can.
“I need 11 players on the pitch,” he added. “With Mario it is a big risk.” Had he seen the foul Balotelli committed on Alex Song in the 20th minute, he suggested, he would have removed him at half-time, instead of leaving him on the pitch to receive – having been shown one yellow card in the 37th minute for a much less heinous challenge on Bacary Sagna – a second and fatal caution for catching the same player again in the 89th, with four minutes of added time to come and City desperate for a goal.
It will be little comfort to City’s fans but at least Mancini has not surrendered his sense of humour along with a lead over their local rivals that once stretched to seven points. Asked the umpteenth question about his delinquent forward, he chuckled. “Next year, if Mario leaves England,” he told his inquisitors from the media, “how can you do? You should be happy if Mario stays here.”
To load the blame for City’s failure on a single immature player would be unfair but once again we saw how much damage a misfit can cause, particularly when he is indulged by a manager who proves unable even to make the best use of whatever talent the player does have at his command.
“He scores important goals,” Mancini said, pointing to two against Manchester United in the 6-1 victory at Old Trafford in October and the injury-time penalty that secured the 3-2 win against Tottenham Hotspur at the Etihad stadium in January.
But to use him as Mancini did yesterday seemed a sure way to waste his potential.
Balotelli played throughout on the left wing, with Sergio Aguero in the middle and first James Milner and then – following Yaya Toure’s early departure – Samir Nasri on the right. There was virtually no constructive interplay, even once City had seen off Arsenal’s opening 20-minute assault. Practically nothing was put Aguero’s way, which meant that the formation was not functioning.
Not often since his arrival in England have we seen Mancini make an imaginative response to a set of unhelpful circumstances.
Yesterday, when he chose to replace Nasri in the closing stages, it was with Aleksandar Kolarov, a full-back. Given what he needed from the match, he might have done better to respond to the sterility of his attack by pulling everyone except Baltotelli back into deep positions and hitting long balls over the Arsenal defence in order to utilise the forward’s pace and shooting power. It would not have been pretty but it might have worked.
So Balotelli’s frustration was not entirely of his own making and we must wait to see if Sheikh Mansour sees fit to give Mancini another year in which to continue his work. The manager was at pains to emphasise that City are 15 points better off this season than they were at this time last year but others may conclude that, given a general dip in standards, the Premier League was there for the taking.
But the Balotelli question will not go away.
If a manager could get it so damagingly wrong about a player he first selected as a 17-year-old, and waste €27 million of his employers’ cash in the process, does he deserve to remain in his post, or should someone else be given the chance to exploit the sovereign wealth of Abu Dhabi?
Mancini has six matches in which to reassemble his team into some sort of convincing force. The derby at the Etihad in three weeks’ time now takes on a different complexion: a battle not for the title but for one man’s right to plead his case.
Guardian Service
