A day after he was pictured in a training ground bust-up with fellow Italian, Mario Balotelli, his manager Roberto Mancini, has insisted that the striker will not sold and that he is ready to give him “100 chances” to prove himself at the club.
Mancini said that their relationship was not affected and that the media blew up everything.
“We were playing a game and Mario kicked his team-mate and I said to him: ‘Go inside, leave the pitch’. He said ‘no’, and I took his shirt and push him off the pitch. This is what really happened. There is no fight. The photo is worse than what happened. It wasn’t a bad thing like [it looked] in the papers,” the 48-year-old explained.
When the question of Balotelli’s future at City was put forward to him, he replied: “My thoughts don’t change. No.
“I will give him another 100 chances if I think he can change. I give him another chance, sure, because he is 22 and he can do a mistake.”
Despite the faith he retains in the erratic player, Mancini admits he is still worried about his temperament.
“What he did yesterday he can also do during the game,” he said. “This is the problem. But I have faith, yes.”
Although he called Thursday’s incident a normal thing, Mancini confessed that he lost his cool with Balotelli, after he refused to leave the pitch.
“For two seconds, yes,” he conceded. “Because he didn’t want to leave the pitch and he should leave. This is a thing that can happen. Usually it happens between two players but this was different.”
Mancini repeated the warning he has always given to the player, that to realise his potential, he has to improve his attitude.
“The problem could be himself. He doesn’t change, for him it will be very difficult in the future: for him, not me. Mario could stay with me one day, one month, five years but his problem is himself. He is 22 years old. He needs to change. It is not easy to manage him.”
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