Mancini likely to drop Balotelli

SOCCER: ENGLISH PREMIER LEAGUE:MARIO BALOTELLI faces being dropped from the Italy squad as a punishment for his latest red card.

A public apology is also unlikely to spare him from being dropped for Manchester City’s match at Chelsea tomorrow. City’s manager, Roberto Mancini, said he no longer feels he can trust the striker for a game of such magnitude.

“I don’t know if I can rely on him for a game like this,” said Mancini, who is usually Balotelli’s most voluble supporter.

Balotelli has scored 10 goals in 20 appearances for City but he has also had two red cards and nine yellows and a training-ground fight with Jerome Boateng. He has shown little sign that he will ever accept authority in his life.

That feeling extends to the national squad, whose coach, Cesare Prandelli, plans to take a hard line and omit Balotelli when he announces his squad tomorrow for a Euro 2012 qualifier in Slovenia on Friday and a friendly against the Ukraine four days later.

Balotelli, in short, faces an enforced spell out of the game as the two managers try to address the pattern of behaviour that led to what Mancini described as a “stupid” red card in City’s Europa League tie against Dynamo Kiev.

Balotelli, in a carefully prepared statement, said he was “very sorry” but he will be fined and there are clear signs at Eastlands that his apparently magnetic attraction to controversy will no longer be tolerated.

“I don’t think he will be in the squad [against Chelsea],” Mancini said. “I’m going to chat with him in the next couple of days and we’ll see. Mario is young but he needs to think about what he wants to do because he has everything he needs to become a fantastic striker. But he lost the [Kiev] tie for us and I am angry with him, definitely. Important players cannot do what Mario did.”

Balotelli was also caught up in an incident after the match, when he jumped out of his car to remonstrate with a group of supporters who are said to have flashed V-signs in his direction.

“I hope, every day, that he will change his behaviour,” Mancini said. “But I can’t understand his bad behaviour sometimes. Sometimes I can, but other times I can’t. I just hope he can change.”

The 20-year-old did at least apologise to his team-mates after Thursday’s game and he followed up with a statement on the club’s website that expressed his regret for the way he rammed his studs into the chest of the Dynamo defender Goran Popov.

“I want to express my sincere apologies to Popov . . . The ball was in the air and I went for it with my foot high. I never tried to make contact with Popov and I certainly didn’t want to hurt him.

“In retrospect, however, the tackle was poor and I’m very sorry to my team-mates in particular that I got sent off so early in such an important game.”

Dutch midfielder Nigel de Jong said. “Mario is a talented boy but I’ve told him he’s got to learn from his mistakes and he’s disadvantaging his own team by doing these kinds of things. He needs to realise that he’s always going to be a marked man.”

Guardian Service