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Three days. That's all it took for the media to concoct a new narrative for Mario Balotelli after AC Milan CEO Adriano Galliani spoke of his new player's "extraordinary attitude" since arriving back in Italy to play for his old club. With Balotelli suddenly and miraculously cured of his enfant terrible reputation, it was only a matter of time before someone latched on to something inoffensive he could be criticized for.
The headlines? Mario Balotelli is a fatty. That was the key take away from an interview given by AC Milan manager Sinisa Mihajlovic to Gazzetta dello Sport.
"He’s not played for a while and he still has to improve," Mihajlovic said now that Balotelli has trained with his new club. "He’s training well and his physical tests are satisfactory, but he’s three kilogrammes overweight: he’s on a diet and when he’s ready he will play."
Raheem Sterling previously made it known that Liverpool also has its own "fat list" of players who are above whatever weight limit has been set for them by the team, and it's standard practise for clubs to monitor all aspects of their players' physicality. What's less common is for members of the "fat list" to be outed by their managers, and even less common for them to do it rather innocuously only to have it spun into clickbait-y headlines in the English press once those quotes have been translated.
Whether the media will eventually collapse under the weight of its self-generated Mario Balotelli #narrative remains to be seen, but it's clear that a "Mario Balotelli isn't match fit, probably because he barely played for Liverpool towards the end" story apparently offers a far less compelling newsbite than "Mario Balotelli: overweight by six pounds." SIX POUNDS.
