Revealed: Why Liverpool were desperate to offload Mario Balotelli

There was something on the other side of the dressing room at Melwood which caught Mario Balotelli’s eye.

When the Italian striker asked what a team-mate was holding, he was informed it was the new iPhone 6. Balotelli, not yet in possession of Apple’s latest smartphone, was visibly irked according to observers.

Moments later he trooped out on to the training field to take part in the warm-up but within minutes he pulled up complaining of discomfort in his hamstring. Staff sent him straight back inside to be checked out by the medics.

When the Liverpool squad returned to the dressing room at the end of the session 90 minutes later, they were surprised by what greeted them.

There was a beaming Balotelli sat in the corner, with a new iPhone 6 in his hand and a few spares boxed up next to him. One of his minions had been hastily dispatched to do some shopping. The pain in his hamstring had miraculously eased.

It’s one of countless anecdotes which explain why the Reds were so desperate to get Balotelli out of the door this summer, reports the Liverpool Echo.

Twelve months after paying AC Milan £16million for his services, the Reds agreed to send him back to the Serie A outfit on a season-long loan. There is no loan fee and they will still have to pay a hefty chunk of his £90,000 per week wages.

There is also no commitment on Milan’s part to make the move permanent but there is little prospect of Balotelli ever pulling on a Liverpool shirt again. His place alongside the likes of El Hadji Diouf, Alberto Aquilani and Andy Carroll in the list of expensive Kop flops is secure.

Brendan Rodgers’ patience with Balotelli, who had been banished to train away from the first-team squad since July, had long since evaporated, All the promises the 25-year-old made last summer about knuckling down and vowing to fulfil his potential proved to be so empty.

A minority of supporters will claim that Balotelli never got a fair crack of the whip. They will point to the fact that of his 28 appearances last season, he only started on 14 occasions. They will argue that Daniel Sturridge’s injury woes denied Balotelli the strike partner he would have hit it off with. They will say he was made a scapegoat for Liverpool’s troubles during a campaign of glaring under-achievement.

But the reality is that Balotelli only has himself to blame for failing at Liverpool. He never came close to meeting the levels of professionalism and commitment demanded of any club employee.

Aside from his half-hearted attitude during training sessions at Melwood, when they were over he was inevitably the first out of the door.

 

Where others stayed behind to do extra work on the field, a gym session, video analysis or just to have lunch together, Balotelli would walk away at the earliest opportunity,

It would be wrong to say he was unpopular in the squad. Amid the stresses and strains of top-flight football, at times he put a smile on his team-mates’ faces with his antics. He was the self-appointed court jester.

They couldn’t quite believe his front when they found him smoking inside the grounds of Melwood. During a team bonding exercise he claimed not to know who Joe Allen was - despite having shared a dressing room with the Wales international for months.

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