AT … LAST
If Mario Balotelli did not exist, The Fiver would have to invent him. Every football-related email needs a character who seems as likely to blunder on elephant-back into a cabinet meeting at 10 Downing Street as he does to score a Big Cup hat-trick. And with the man who, in just 12 months, managed to teach Brendan Rodgers some humility, tales of outlandish capers just keep on coming.
You never quite know whether the stories are true – the Liverpool Echo today carries an anecdote about him suffering from mysterious knack during a Liverpool training session before suddenly recovering when a lackey brought him a batch of brand new iPhones; while Uefa has still not been able to remove the handiwork of the hacker who broke into the governing body’s website several years ago and listed Balotelli as joint top-scorer at Euro 2012! – but the Italian has been involved in so much hijinks over the years, that almost anything you say about him seems plausible. Yet The Fiver still had to do a double-take on Thursday morning when it read that Liverpool had found a club to take him off their hands.
Milan fans had been teased all off-season about the possibility of Zlatan Ibrahimovic returning to San Siro. Instead they are getting Balotelli again, which is a bit like telling a teenage girl you’re going to take her to meet One Direction and then introducing her to Roger East. Or, for that matter, reassuring fans that there is life after Luis Suárez, and then signing Balotelli. Still, it is only a loan and Liverpool will continuing paying a hefty chunk of the salary of the Italian, who, in turn, has agreed to spend less of that salary on hairdos and circus routines. So maybe Milan have got a good deal, especially as Balotelli says he has finally wised up.
“I told [Milan manager Sinisa Mihajlovic] that I understood my errors, that if he gave me this chance I would not disappoint him, that I am a man and I no longer create problems, that I will accept all of his decisions,” said Balotelli in a long interview that was encouraging and endearing, even if it did sound a lot like the pledges he made before flopping at Anfield. “I am restarting from zero,” he continued. “I know that I can’t make any mistakes, I can’t expect anything and I must win everything back. I am no longer a child and I have already thrown away too many chances.” Let’s hope for Balotelli’s sake that doesn’t turn out to be another baseless yarn.
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Join Paul Doyle from 4.45pm BST for the Fiver deadline-baiting Big Cup draw.
QUOTE OF THE DAY
31 July 2015: “It’s great to be in partnership with Blackpool FC on all levels, with players and fans alike. We look forward to a great future in our partnership with Blackpool FC both on and off the field” – Village hotels chief suit Gary Davis cheers the company’s new sponsorship deal with Blackpool.
27 August 2015: “Blackpool is one of many teams we have supported and in hindsight maybe it’s something that we should have avoided, but the shirt deal is done and we will honour the contract this season. However, we have no direct interaction with the club owners at any level and will not be renewing at the end of the season. We will be happy to continue future sponsorship to a new ownership” – Davis finds reverse gear and puts his foot on the gas.
RECOMMENDED VIEWING
In the latest from our Football Passport series, we hopped over for a chat with Frank de Boer about Ajax: the academy for world football.
FIVER LETTERS
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BITS AND BOBS
Kevin Nolan has taken up Slaven Bilic’s offer of unlimited gift vouchers for the Hotel Du One and started his stay with immediate affect.
Brighton and Watford are slugging it out for the signature of Feyenoord’s winger Elvis Manu despite the fact that he’s highly rated by Ghana coach Avram Grant.
Jon Walters says that, if Stoke could stop signing former Barcelona and Inter players for one minute, then he’d quite like a new contract please. “In my eyes if they valued me [the contract] would be there and it’s not there so … talk’s cheap when it comes to things like these and I’ll leave it for the men behind the scenes to sort out,” he huffed.
Juventus striker Fernando Llorente has successfully coughed for the Sevilla doctors and signed a three-year deal at the club.
After being left out of Middlesbrough’s starting line-up for the match against Bristol City, Albert Adomah went straight down to WH Smith’s to buy the best quality Basildon Bond he could find so he could scribble out a transfer request upon it.
Belgian bizzies have nicked 57 Manchester United fans for brawling in Bruges, but the chief constable of the city’s plod Dirk van Nuffel said most fans behaved themselves. “They drank a lot but that is an English tradition,” he trilled from the country that is well-known chiefly for producing beer, chips and Tintin.
The fact that Arsenal have fitness concerns over their first-choice centre-back pairing of Per Mertesacker and Laurent Koscielny is of far less interest than the fact that this story features Gunnersaurus falling on his backside at the Arsenal training pitch.
Thiago Alcântara has extended his Bayern Munich contract by two years. “We’re happy,” sniffed chief Bayern suit Karl-Heinz Rummenigge.
And the president of the Malaysian second-tier outfit Negeri Sembilan has sacked almost every one of his players after accusing them of getting knacked in order to spend more time with their wages. “Sometimes they purposely get injured because they want to enjoy the salary but are not willing to produce,” growled Seri Mohamad Hasan.
STILL WANT MORE?
Yeah, you could play Marouane Fellaini as a striker if you want to score more goals, or you could stop telling Manchester United to pass the ball sideways the entire time, yells Jonathan Wilson in the general direction of Louis van Gaal.
What happened when Kevin Keegan opened a Soccer Circus in Dubai? Find out in this week’s edition of Classic YouTube.
Caitlin Murray wonders if women’s soccerball can maintain its World Cup high in USA! USA!! USA!!!
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