Mario Balotelli has attracted plenty of criticism in his short time at Manchester City. On the day he signed, he claimed he wished he hadn’t left Italy and since then has been involved in a whole host of controversies, including training ground punch-ups and throwing darts at City’s youth team players.
When it comes to commitment, it’s clear that this lad couldn’t give a shit less about City and has been linked with moves to AC Milan repeatedly. A month in to his City career he was singing Milan songs from his hospital window and two months after that he claimed he didn’t care which shirt he wore, as long as he got to play alongside Milan’s Ibrahimovic again.
So as soon as the final whistle blew yesterday, it should have come as no surprise that he didn’t run over to his team mates, given how unpopular he is. It should have come as no surprise that he didn’t run over to the City fans, given he doesn’t care about them. But I suppose I was fairly surprised to see him running over to the United fans, wafting his shirt around, because I assumed he couldn’t care less about us either. I could imagine Tevez or even Wright-Phillips or Richards wanting to have a go at our fans, but what have we got to do with Balotelli? It was strange.
Rio: “If you score a goal and give a bit to opposing fans I kind of accept that but at the final whistle go to your own fans and enjoy it, not opposing fans.”
Now, maybe the press have scolded Rio Ferdinand and Anderson for their reaction to this (unsurprisingly, I’ve avoided the papers today), but I was made up to see it. It’s not as if Balotelli had got in one of our players’ face and they were fighting on behalf of their team mates. They went over to Balotelli and had be torn away from him because they were attacking him on behalf of us. I liked that. I liked them being incensed because the fans had been insulted.
Would Balotelli react in the same way if one of our players had rubbed a result in the faces of City fans? Would he fuck.
Thank you Rio and Anderson.
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