Mario Balotelli joined Liverpool for £16m from AC Milan on this day in 2014 - having previously played for Manchester City and Inter Milan
"I think we have done a really smart piece of business here. This transfer represents outstanding value for the club."
In the end, the Reds settled for Balotelli. It proved to be a disastrous call. Brendan Rodgers was renowned for his man-management skills, but managing the Italian proved to be a step too far even for him. And it didn’t take long for the Italian’s team-mates to start losing patience with him as one anecdote from Liverpool's Premier League trip to Queens Park Rangers in mid October illustrates how the situation was unravelling.
Rodgers, in his defence, openly admitted following his sacking at Liverpool that he did not have the last word on transfers at the time and the call to bring Balotelli to Anfield was not his. Anfield icon Steven Gerrard, whose 17th and final season at Liverpool coincided with Balotelli's, spoke in his autobiography about how even from the start he had his doubts over whether his presence at Anfield could ever work out.
“But I also had to admit that, when he played for Italy, he seemed able to switch on his gift like he was snapping on a bright light. When he scored the winner against England in the 2014 World Cup a month earlier he showed all the movement which made him so difficult to mark at his best. I told Brendan that, up close to him on the pitch, you could see that he was a big, powerful guy.
“There was no friction between us. We got on fine. I still tried to help him and I kept looking for chances to praise him. But I could see Mourinho had been right when he said Balotelli is unmanageable.
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