The Argentine insists the under-fire Liverpool striker was loved by everyone at the Etihad Stadium and reveals no one else knew about the ‘Why Always Me?’ t-shirt stunt
Sergio Aguero admits he still misses having former team-mate and under-fire Liverpool striker Mario Balotelli at Manchester City.
Balotelli spent two of his three years at City alongside Aguero, with the pair famously combining for the last-minute goal against QPR that sealed the club’s first Premier League title win in dramatic fashion in May 2012.
Since then the fortunes of the two men have gone in contrasting directions. Balotelli departed City and then AC Milan in acrimonious circumstances and has been criticised for failing to fire for Liverpool since his €20 million move to Anfield in August.
Aguero, meanwhile, added a second Premier League winners’ medal to his collection in 2013-14 and is currently level with Chelsea striker Diego Costa at the top of the scoring charts this season, having netted four against Tottenham on Sunday.
Yet despite all this, the Argentina international insists his former team-mate was loved by everyone at City and his absence remains felt at the club.
“I still miss Mario Balotelli being at City,” Aguero reveals in his new autobiography, ‘Born to rise: My story’, serialised by the Daily Mirror. “Even though he used to drive us all nuts.
“We all knew Mario was a little crazy. The thing was, Mario was crazy when he wanted to be. He’d do daft things whenever he felt like it because he thought he could.
“We’d go out on the training pitch and he’d kick the balls away in different directions just to be silly, or he’d throw cheese over people when he was sat in the dining room.
“I couldn’t help but wind him up, calling him silly names and toying with him. But he knew it was because I loved Mario – everyone loved him.”
Aguero also revealed that the rest of the City squad were kept in the dark about Balotelli’s now infamous ‘Why always me?’ t-shirt celebration during City’s 6-1 mauling of Manchester United at Old Trafford in October 2011.
“Nobody knew he had that t-shirt on when we played United at Old Trafford – he must have hidden it beneath a vest,” the Argentine insisted. “If we’d known we’d have told him to take it off.
“But later when I looked at the ‘Why Always Me?’ message on the front, I told him that if he was calmer and didn’t do so many things, it probably wouldn’t always be him.”