:format(webp)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/46859656/GettyImages-473716894.0.jpg)
About the only way Mario Balotelli is likely to end up still at Liverpool this season is if Liverpool can’t find a side willing to take him off their hands. Increasingly, though, it’s looked as though that just might be what happens, an unfortunate outcome for all involved but one many feared the day Liverpool were linked to a striker who always seemed a poor fit.
So far, Fiorentina have been rumoured suitors but reportedly backed out of a potential loan deal despite that Liverpool were offering to pay half Balotelli's wages. Sampdoria have continuously made noises about being interested, too, but constant talk of how poor they are and that it would take a real bargain for them to get him hasn’t inspired confidence he might actually end up there, even for one season.
Bologna can now be added to the list of clubs who would maybe possibly at least consider taking Balotelli on loan for the right price who in the end he probably won’t end up with because the right price would probably have to be free. At least if the poorhouse antics of league-mates Fiorentina and Sampdoria are anything to go by. Still, Bolgona’s sporting director says they’d like to bring in Balotelli.
"I would take him," Pantaleo Corvino told Corriere dello Sport today, making Bologna the second club—following Sampdoria—to have publicly suggested they're interested in the striker. "He would be highly motivated here. Of course we have to respect that as a club we have certain financial parameters. But for the right price, I would even consider the possibility of buying him outright."
Liverpool are reportedly willing to sell Balotelli for around £7M—or just a hair under €10M—but, as has been seen with Sampdoria, even that bargain rate might be too much for a bottom half Serie A side. And even if it isn't, Balotelli’s wages, which currently stand at around £90k per week, would likely stop any deal from going through unless the player decides he really wants to go back to Italy.
With the Euro still sagging, that's a wage that works out to around €125k per week on the continent, which even the top Serie A sides would struggle to pay for a proven star. When it’s another gamble on Balotelli, it's a wage that seems downright preposterous for any side outside of the Premier League. Still, if Liverpool want to knock a few extra million off the sale price and subsidize his wages, one never knows.
Because like Corvino says, they’d take him. For the right price. Which, as with Sampdoria and Fiorentina before them, is probably free—or at least not far off it.
