Why Sinisa Mihajlovic Should Watch His Words on AC Milan's Mario Balotelli

He scored early and pretty spectacularly, but as always with Mario Balotelli, there was a subplot.

In a hastily arranged friendly match with Serie C side Mantova on Thursday—played just as Southampton’s Graziano Pelle, the current holder of the Italy centre-forward’s jersey that should have been Balotelli’s property by now given his potential, was playing up front for the national team—the forward found the net after three minutes.

It briefly flickered across social media. As an amusing distraction from the evening’s Euro 2016 qualifiers, in which Pelle scored Italy’s winner against Malta, it was a good one.

Here was Balotelli scoring the same amount of goals in three minutes of his second spell with Milan than he managed in the Premier League for Liverpool last season—as the Independent pointed out all too readily.

And for a man who lives his life in headlines it was a good story, only for his new manager, Sinisa Mihajlovic, to add an all-too-familiar chapter to the end of it. The Serbian told TV channel Premium Sport (h/t FourFourTwo): "Balotelli? We played a team from Serie C; we see that he is not in good condition and must improve."

The forward himself disagreed, telling the same channel (h/t the MailOnline) as he left the pitch at half-time: "I have always been in good shape and put in the maximum effort like everyone. I am happy to have scored a goal and provided an assist. I want to win this game because I don’t like losing."

For most other footballers it would be a minor disagreement, but because it’s Balotelli it warrants both investigation and introspection. We just have to hope for the footballer’s sake that history isn’t repeating itself.

Because Mihajlovic should know that, having presumably agreed to bring Balotelli into his squad, there is a certain way to go about handling this most demanding of players, and criticising him isn’t it.

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The coach’s words brought back memories of a couple of statements from Brendan Rodgers during what is extremely likely to be Balotelli’s only season at Liverpool—a season that started with his debut in a 3-0 win at Tottenham Hotspur, in which he played well for an hour in tandem with strike partner Daniel Sturridge.

However, instead of focusing solely on that, Rodgers told reporters after the match, relayed by the Independent, that he’d made Balotelli mark at corners for the first time in his career, a strange comment and, if anything, something designed more at promoting his own managerial abilities rather than the performance of the centre-forward.

Fast forward six months, and after Balotelli barged in front of Sturridge and Jordan Henderson to take—and score—a late penalty against Besiktas in the Europa League following a fairly effective display as a substitute, Rodgers raged at his work rate in his post-match interview, as per the Daily Mirror.

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By this point, the writing was pretty much on the wall for ever-controversial Italian at Anfield, but the fact remains if you are going to have him at your club, then why would you do and say things that are going to upset him?

The answer—as an ever-increasing number of football managers seem to be working out—is not to have him at your club at all, but Mihajlovic has him at his for now, and he’s just scored a good goal despite having pretty much no pre-season training behind him. A couple of nice words could have gone a long way.

All of this came just a day after Milan CEO Adriano Galliani was at pains to point out the penny had dropped with Balotelli, telling the MailOnline:

"

He's probably realised that this is his last chance and I'm sure he won't waste it. His technical ability has never been in question.

If he continues with the approach he's had in this first week then he'll be fine.

"

Will he, though? Or will this just be another stop-off in an increasingly unravelling career?

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Balotelli doesn’t deserve sympathy, doesn’t deserve special treatment and doesn’t deserve a series of managers tearing out hair after hair in a bid to work him out. He needs to grow up.

But if you sign him, you know what you’re getting yourself into.

Mihajlovic might have thought that he was laying down a marker in his relationship with the forward, but he’s going down a route plenty have taken a wrong turn into before.

He’ll only have himself to blame if the results are the same.