Mario could be more than just City arm candy

BREAK-UPS are never easy, least of all when the person doing the breaking is being so nasty about it.

All they ever wanted was love. Oh, their friends warned them about their high maintenance Latin lover, but they were, as always, utterly oblivious to caution. Now he’s shown them up in front of everyone and they have to wipe away their tears, re-apply their make-up and try to move on. The obvious course of revenge is out.

Carlos Tevez only has one friend anyway, Kia Joorabchian, and he’d probably invoice you if you tried to sleep with him. That leaves one option. To find a younger, hotter lover.

Step forward, Mario Balotelli.

Balotelli is, without a doubt, the greatest asset of the Premier League. With all the genuine stars, Lionel Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo and the symbiotic being Xaviniesta, residing in La Liga, the English game must once again call upon its reserves of ‘character’. Well, they don’t get much more idiosyncratic than this one. Balotelli throws darts at youth players, but then drives a bullied fan to his school to demand talks with his headteacher. He gives wads of money to tramps, is mobbed at impromptu prison visits and provided the greatest ever answer to police officers who asked him why he had £5,000 in his back pocket. “Because I am rich,” he deadpanned.

But he’s not just the star of the finest sitcom never written, he’s a first class footballer, as Blackburn found to their cost on Saturday. He can play anywhere across the front line, he can hold the ball up, he can deliver it to his teammates and he can, on occasion, spank it into the top corner with extreme prejudice. He is one of those rare players whose very presence on the ball will make a neutral shuffle forward in their seat.

It is a strange world indeed if Balotelli can be described as one of City’s most well-adjusted strikers, but the world is ruled by those who take advantage of moments of crisis. If, and this is an ‘if’ the size of Yakubu’s bottom, Roberto Mancini can successfully tame him, Balotelli could be world class. It is time for City to stop blubbing, to put Balotelli on their arm and to get out there and be seen.