Mario Balotelli 'very disappointed' at Liverpool, but plans to stay, reveals agent

Mario Balotelli has failed to score a single premier league goal since his move

Mino Raiola has revealed that Mario Balotelli is ‘very disappointed’ with his time at Liverpool, but has no immediate plans to leave the club. Raiola also admitted that bringing the striker back to Italy from Manchester City was one of the biggest mistakes of his career.

The former Manchester CIty and AC Milan striker has failed to score a single premier league goal since his £16 million move to Anfield last summer and has faced considerable criticsm from supporters. Speaking with Gazzetto dello Sport, Raiola mentioned that the 24-year old is not having a happy time, but has no plans to leave this month.

“Liverpool are different from other clubs,” said Raiola. “There, [because of Brendan Rodgers’s philosophy] they can’t allow themselves 10 players who run and a superstar [who doesn’t]. Mario is a player who changes a game for you in two or three moments, so they have to adapt to him and him to them.”

“The plan is to continue at Anfield. I saw him Monday and told him: ‘You have a four-year contract and I won’t bring you away. Or you leave Liverpool for 60-70 million (euros), and I won my bet, or you’ll die there’.”

“It’s the first time I have made a speech like that to a player. I’ve seen him quiet, changed, different than (when he was at) Milan. Very disappointed with himself, too. He’s going through a bad time like he never had before.”

“In Liverpool he hasn’t his spaces: if you don’t make things as they want, you stay out (of the team). Then he was out for eight weeks, he lost the rhythm.”

Balotelli is an insecure kid: Raiola

Raiola, who has been Balotelli’s agent for the past five years, added that the player seems much calmer at Liverpool than he was at his former club Milan,

“Of all the champions I have represented I have never met one who has been forced to go through the injustices Mario has gone through, People don’t know him. The truth is that Mario is an insecure kid and in his insecurity perhaps he sometimes does silly things.” He also admitted that taking him back to Italy was the biggest mistake of his career,

“I should have said to him: ‘You’re not going back to Italy. City are a great club. They’ll never let you down. This is the football that counts [one of the best leagues in the world] and you want to leave it’.”

“I’m convinced I was wrong for another reason too: Milan needed a leader. Give the ball to Mario, he scores and everyone is happy. But he is not a leader and it was wrong to ask him to be one. There are great players who aren’t leaders, and other not-so-great players who are.”