MANCHESTER CITY have sent Mario Balotelli to the US to work with the specialist who is credited with prolonging Jonny Wilkinson’s rugby career and helping Tiger Woods recover from a serious knee injury.
Bill Knowles, a strength and conditioning expert, has also worked with the rugby players Lawrence Dallaglio, Richard Hill and Charlie Hodgson on knee problems, developing fitness programmes to help “professional and Olympic-level athletes recover from season-ending and career-threatening injuries”.
City’s decision to send Balotelli to the remote clinic in Killington, Vermont, where it is currently -18 degrees Celsius, demonstrates how seriously they are taking the player’s recurrent knee problems, with the manager, Roberto Mancini, admitting yesterday the €30 million signing “has never been 100 per cent while he’s been here”.
Balotelli was out for two months after an operation in September to repair a tear in his meniscus cartilage. He has since suffered swelling to the knee and not been involved in the previous five games.
Mancini had said last week the forward needed a period of complete rest before a decision would be made about whether he needs a second operation or was free to return to training. Visiting Vermont, however, indicates a different strategy entirely, with Knowles placing Balotelli on an intensive two-week camp aimed at building the muscles in the knee.
Knowles’s philosophy is summed up by Dallaglio in an endorsement on the clinic’s website, having worked with him after knee surgery in the build-up to the 2007 rugby World Cup: “From the first session, I knew I had struck gold . . . but a word of warning – be prepared to work hard!”
City hope the chance to get out of Manchester and concentrate solely on his fitness may have benefits for Balotelli, similar to Manchester United’s thinking when they sent Wayne Rooney to a training camp in Portland, Oregon, this season. “Yes exactly that,” Mancini said. “He can work quietly, without a problem. Without the pressure he has here.
“In these two weeks he must work hard in Vermont and we hope when he comes back in two weeks he will be ready to play, maybe in the derby (against Manchester United on February 12th), but it’s more important that when he comes back he is okay to play in all the games for the rest of the season. That’s more important than whether he’s back for the derby, or the week before, or the week after.”
There is still a lingering fear the player who has scored eight goals in only 11 City appearances may need longer on the sidelines. “I hope he doesn’t need an operation,” Mancini said. “The surgeon who operated on him last time has said he doesn’t. If he does, it will be a problem for us.”
Balotelli’s absence might sway Mancini towards retaining Carlos Tevez as his penalty taker despite the Argentinian missing his last two, although City’s manager was far from conclusive. Mancini’s occasionally volatile relationship with Tevez has improved over the past month or so and the Italian would not confirm his plans, taking great care not to say anything that could be deemed as critical of his captain and leading scorer.
Mancini was also supportive of Balotelli, expressing bemusement about the reaction to an interview with the player in Italy in which comments about Rooney – “he’s good, but not the best in Manchester” – were widely perceived as deliberately provocative, when the City player was merely sending himself up. While the translation was accurate, sources close to the player say the context was lost and that Balotelli was poking fun at himself.
“He likes to joke sometimes,” Mancini said, and the manager made it clear he is not concerned by the frequency with which Balotelli talks himself into trouble. “It’s a free world, if he wants to speak then he can speak . . . This is not the SS. It’s not like the war, when we couldn’t speak.”
Guardian Service
