OUR Italian correspondent, Neil Sowerby, was selling Rolex watches in Bergamo Airport this afternoon when he was shocked and surprised to see none other than Mario Balotelli checking-in.
The striker was cutting things fine. If he wanted to fly back to England for the Manchester City Victory Parade this evening then he had less than four hours to do so. And would have had to turn on his heel and just go.
He appears to have delivered another snub for fans of Manchester City who after their forty four year wait would have wanted to hail all their heroes in the open-top bus parade planned for this evening.
Rumours surfaced at the airport that maybe he'd nipped back for some of his favourite fireworks to celebrate City's last minute triumph on Sunday. Other rumours did the rounds that he'd told people in Manchester Airport he'd returned for "family reasons".
Last year Balotelli caused anger by ignoring calls to come back to the city to celebrate the FA Cup victory. This year the parade and procession has sensibly been held the day after the triumph rather than days after. Maybe that was so Balotelli might feel he could stick around until after the procession to go home.
If so, that didn't work.
Instead he appears to have delivered another snub for fans of Manchester City who after their forty four year wait would have wanted to hail all their heroes in the open-top bus parade planned for this evening - even if he were wearing his Premier League Champions medal.
'Why always me?' asked Balotelli through the medium of the t-shirt in October's dismantling of Manchester United.
Mario, now come on, do we really need to answer that?
