Roberto Mancini has indicated that Italy striker Mario Balotelli will be reinstated to the first squad this weekend as Manchester City face off against Sunderland - despite Balotelli never actually being dropped. The 20 year-old has had a turbulent fortnight, having been shown a straight red card in City’s Europa League clash against Dynamo Kiev and then being caught throwing darts at member of the youth team from his window after being passed over for selection by Italy national team coach Cesare Prandelli.
Mario Balotelli Set For Manchester City Return
Despite the incident-packed two week spell, Mancini is totally confident - and I’ll have to assume that this isn’t an April Fools’ joke - that Balotelli will be better behaved:
I hope that after Dynamo Kiev his behaviour will be good. I think he wants to show he can change his behaviour in the last two months, because he lost also the national team for two games. It’s not a good thing for a young player like Mario.
Bear in mind that in the week in which Balotelli was supposedly reflecting on his issues, he was caught doing the whole throwing darts out the window thing, which does rather imply that introspection isn’t one of the forward’s strong points. Mancini continued with a swipe at the media:
If Mario goes into a restaurant and speaks with a woman, [the journalists write that] there are five women.
This says some odd things about Roberto Mancini’s personal code of honour, but it also casts doubts on recent reports that Mario Balotelli has fled the country and joined up with a Somali pirate gang after kidnapping and murdering five hundred people over the weekend.
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