Mario Balotelli: What did kitman find in his Man City locker after he left? | OneFootball

Mario Balotelli could be something of a law unto himself at Manchester City, but it wasn’t all bad, especially around Christmas time.

When the controversial Italian wasn’t scrapping with Roberto Mancini or setting off fireworks in his house, then you could rest assured that he was racking up more fines than sense at the training ground.

As you may know already, disciplinary fines at Premier League clubs can be pretty eye-watering with leaked sheets of financial penalties having leaked from Chelsea and Aston Villa over the last few years.

How much did Balotelli get fined at Man City?

And the behaviour of Balotelli alone during his time at the Etihad Stadium would see the Citizens make some serious cash around the very time of year we find ourselves now: Christmas.

At least, that’s according to Micah Richards, who provided fascinating insight on how the fines worked during his time at City back in 2019 as the world remarked at Frank Lampard‘s leaked system at Chelsea.

Speaking to BBC Radio 5 Live that same year, Richards reacted to the Lampard numbers by saying: “£20,000 late for the starting of training – that is a lot. But everything else seems to be in sync.

Video: Richards tells stories about Balotelli getting fined

“But Balotelli was always late. We used to give all of our money to charities so by Christmas time we’d have £100,000 or £150,000 in there just from Balotelli.

“He would be in the building. Say we had a meeting upstairs – he’d just be downstairs relaxing. He’d come to the meeting but he was just a bit dozy.”

While it’s obviously not great that Balotelli was so ill-disciplined as to be fined pretty much every 10 seconds, it’s good to know that there was at least a major positive to come out of that in the form of massive charitable donations.

Christmas is, after all, a time for giving, so it’s good to know that Balotelli was dishing out his riches to those in needs regardless of whether it was initially intended that way!

What did kitman find in Balotelli’s locker?

Also, while we’re at it, we might as well talk about another belting story with regards to Balotelli and fines during his spell in sky blue between 2010 and 2013.

And this time, we’re not talking about the financial forfeits dished out by the club, but rather the punishments that were being given by the various parking companies of the Manchester area.

With a 2011 report from the Daily Mail claiming that Balotelli had racked up almost £10,000 in parking fines with his Maserati impounded a head-spinning 27 times, it should come as no surprise to learn that the Italian was subsequently up to his ears in paperwork.

And boy did former City kitman Les Chapman find that out the hard way as he told a hilarious story about Balotelli’s locker as part of a brilliant interview with the Mail in 2017.

“He was a complete one-off, the most unpredictable man on the planet,” Chapman reminisced. “When he got sent off at Arsenal he threw his boot through the plasma TV in the dressing-room!

“But he was bright, he wasn’t stupid, and he was very generous. He would go into a garage and pay for everyone’s petrol or give a homeless guy a wad of cash.

“Then he used to wonder why his car was impounded 27 times… because it was painted in camouflage and he parked it on double yellows outside San Carlo restaurant in the middle of Manchester every day. I opened his locker after he left and all his parking tickets just fell out!”

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Don’t go changing, Mario, don’t go changing.

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