Devoted Mancini a loser in love

The best of the many pictures of the scrap between Roberto Mancini and Mario Balotelli showed the Manchester City manager curled into a kind of standing foetal position, clutching his head with his hands. The howl of rage was easy to imagine.

Mancini may have been angry with Mario Balotelli, who had defied his authority in his usual infuriating way, but the person who had done most to make Mancini look foolish was Mancini himself.

At that moment, Mancini didn’t realise how foolish he would end up looking as he had no idea that somebody was snapping photographs of him with a long lens. The photographs did not actually change anything, however, beyond allowing the wider world to snigger at City’s expense. The club have since talked about the need to beef up security at their training ground, which was a red herring. The only audience that really matters was there on the training ground with Mancini and Balotelli and they had already seen the whole thing.