Former Manchester City striker Mario Balotelli who is currently on loan at AC Milan has expressed his support for Jose Mourinho on Instagram. The Italy International who played under Mourinho during their time at Inter Milan, called the Portuguese tactician a ‘great manager’.
Jose Mourinho was sacked as the Chelsea manager last week and Balotelli joins the list of footballers who have come out in support of the 52-year-old. This is what the Italian striker had to say about ‘The Special One’ on his Instagram page.
“Doesn't matter what you think or what you say Jose is a great manager”
“He[’s] show[n] it already many times with different teams.”
And as we all know Mourinho has shown his worth working with teams such as FC Porto, Inter Milan and Real Madrid. He has been the manager of Chelsea twice and met with success on both occasions. Well, until recently.
Balotelli had a troubled relationship with Mourinho at Inter
The relationship between Mourinho and Balotelli goes back to the days when Mourinho used to be the manager of Inter Milan and Balotelli was making his debut. Their relationship was rather a stormy one. Mourinho had accused Balotelli of having disciplinary problems.
Owing to the striker’s lack of effort in training Mourinho had said, "as far as I'm concerned, a young boy like him cannot allow himself to train less than people like Figo, Córdoba, and Zanetti." This resulted in Mourinho excluding Balotelli from the first team in the second half of January 2009.
Balotelli had a troubled life at Inter and his problems with Mourinho continued during the 2009-10 campaign. Criticisms started coming in from the then team captain Javier Zanetti and veteran defender Marco Materazzi. Matters hit the ceiling when Balotelli was not called to the first team as Inter was supposed to play against Chelsea in the second-leg of the UEFA Champions League.
This was followed by an altercation between the manager and the player. Eventually after a few more appearances for Inter, Balotelli moved to Manchester City in 2010. But before leaving Inter he had made it clear that he thought highly of the coach and he insisted that Mourinho was right when he criticized Balotelli.
Here is what he said, "There are seven matches left to win the title. The relationship with Mourinho? Excellent, he motivates me every day and he was right when he says that I have often been too distracted.”
Mourinho was sacked as Chelsea manager last week owing to the club’s bad run of form this season. Chelsea are the defending champions of the English Premiere League. Sadly enough the man responsible for victory has now fallen from grace and has been shown the door.
Mourinho first came to Chelsea in the year 2004 and led them to their first League title win in 50 years. Chelsea gathered a record 95 points that season having conceded only 15 goals. Both being records that are yet to be broken in the Premier League.
However, several big clubs are reportedly planning to recruit Mourinho as he has made it clear that he would consider getting back to managing and would not be going on a hiatus.
