Mario Balotelli

By Craig · Published 31 October 2026

Mario Balotelli played 70 Premier League games and made one assist. It came deep into added time on the last day of 2011/12, and it won Manchester City the league. That is Balotelli in a sentence: hardly any numbers you could build a case on, and a place in every highlights reel the Premier League will ever make.

Clubs

Inter, Manchester City, AC Milan, Liverpool, Nice, Marseille and several more

Premier League

70 appearances, 21 goals (54 and 20 for City, 16 and 1 for Liverpool)

Honours

Premier League 2011/12, FA Cup 2011

International

Italy, 36 caps, 14 goals

Fantasy price

£8.0m in 2011/12

How he arrived

Roberto Mancini had worked with Balotelli at Inter and never stopped rating him. In August 2010 City paid a fee reported at around £24m to bring the 20-year-old to Manchester, and English football found out quickly that he did nothing quietly.

It took him one season to make the trip worthwhile. In May 2011 he was named man of the match in the FA Cup final, a 1-0 win over Stoke that ended 35 years without a trophy for City.

The moment: Manchester United, 23 October 2011

The build-up was already chaotic. Fireworks set off in the bathroom of his rented house had started a fire, and Balotelli insisted a friend was responsible. Within days he was photographed backing a fireworks safety campaign in Manchester.

Then he went to Old Trafford and opened the scoring with a side-footed finish. He lifted his shirt to show a slogan printed underneath: "Why always me?" He scored again after Jonny Evans was sent off, and City won 6-1, United's heaviest derby defeat since 1926.

The moment: QPR, 13 May 2012

City needed to win on the final day and were losing 2-1 to QPR with a quarter of an hour left when Balotelli came off the bench. Deep into added time, Nigel de Jong found him. He has said he wanted to shoot, but a wall of defenders and a shove sent the ball away from him. So he slid it into the space for Sergio Agüero instead.

Agüero scored at 93:20 and City were champions. It was the only assist Balotelli ever made in the Premier League, and he calls it one of the three best moments of his career.

Why the streets won't forget

Because the contradiction was the point. In the title season he scored 13 league goals in 23 games, a serious return by anyone's standards. He was also sent off at Arsenal for two yellow cards in a 1-0 defeat, and missed the next five games.

Other players were more reliable, and Yaya Touré and Agüero did more to win that title. But the season that changed the balance of power in Manchester was full of Balotelli moments: the shirt, the fire, the final at Wembley and the pass. Nobody who watched the Premier League in 2011/12 needs to look any of them up.

Where is he now

City sold him to AC Milan in January 2013. Liverpool brought him back to England in August 2014 for £16m, and he managed one league goal for them, an 83rd-minute winner against Tottenham in February 2015.

Since then he has played for Nice, Marseille, Brescia, Monza, Adana Demirspor, Sion and Genoa, who released him in 2025 after six substitute appearances without a goal. In January 2026 he signed for Al Ittifaq, a Dubai club in the UAE's second tier, and scored three in his first four games.

For Italy he won 36 caps and scored 14 goals, including both in the 2-1 win over Germany in the semi-final of Euro 2012.

Which seasons can you draft him in?

Four. He isn't in the game's 2012/13 squads, the season City sold him in January. He is in 2016/17, still listed at Liverpool for £7.5m, though he left for Nice that August without playing another game for Liverpool.

Want him in your retro fantasy football team? Pick him in 2011/12, the title season, for £8.0m.