Manchester City boss Roberto Mancini has stated that getting married may be the solution to Mario Balotelli’s run of recent indiscipline.
The Italy international was fined two-weeks wages, £250,000, after he was spotted leaving a strip club in Liverpool at 2.45am on Friday, breaking the Etihad Stadium outfit’s curfew.
Mancini also admitted to feeling let down by Balotelli’s antics, but has pledged to be patient with the eccentric forward.
“It could be that marriage would help him in that respect,” he is quoted as saying in The Daily Mail.
“That could be the answer, because I am sure he understands that he has made a mistake. Mario is like this, but there is nothing we can do if he does not eventually realise he cannot keep doing this.
“It seems anything can happen with him at any moment. He is his own worst enemy and it is 100 per cent that he should have learned by now. When you are a professional, you should know you cannot stay out until after two o’clock in the morning, so close to a game.
“He needs to understand this. Now he is young, but at 25 or 26 it will be different. If you do not have a good private life then, you will not be able to play at the top level.
“Sometimes I feel a bit let down. These things will happen at his age, but after 100 times, I think he should understand what is going on around him.
“I am very kind with him but, like all the players, he knows he has to behave well to stay in the team. He was on the bench five or six times at the start of the season, because his behaviour was not good. I think he is just immature, but he will have to pay for it.
“Do I think he’s more trouble than he’s worth? No. I have a lot of patience with him.
“Probably he gets bored quickly. There is no malice. He just doesn’t think that there is a game in two days, that players are away on international duty and that we prepare for him to be the main striker because he would be freshest.
“He doesn’t think along those lines, but this has to change,” he concluded.
By Gareth McKnight
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