Does this man symbolise all that’s wrong with British football?

His home is a seven-bedroom mansion reached by a sweeping drive, at the end of which an ornate stone fountain surrounded by a circular miniature box hedge creates a turning circle for visitors’ cars — not to mention his own, a white £140,000 Bentley Continental GT with a top speed of 198mph.


The £3million house is familiar to Cheshire firemen who, late last year, were called there at 1am and had to use breathing apparatus while putting out a fierce blaze on the first floor started by fireworks being shot out of the bathroom window.


Some of them knew the owner from a previous blaze in his ninth-floor penthouse in Manchester, also caused by letting off fireworks. Footballer Mario Balotelli, it may safely be said, has a taste for pyrotechnics.        More