Mourinho: I called Balotelli for a meeting... he went to the Formula 1!

Chelsea manager Jose Mourinho has revealed that Mario Balotelli once skipped a meeting with him at Inter to attend a Formula 1 event. The Portuguese worked with the striker, now at Liverpool, during his time in charge of Inter, and though the Italian was unpredictable, he has fond memories of his “funny problems” in trying to control his mercurial charge.

Mourinho has previously said that he could write a book about his dealings with Balotelli and told BT Sport that it would be “a funny book, a good book!”

“[Balotelli was a] nice kid, in my time, needed support, needed the older players to support him because it’s not good when that educational relationship is just between the manager and the player,” he said in an interview to be broadcast on Christmas Day.

"I always think that it’s important that the people surrounding help the manager in that process.

"We had funny problems. I told him to be at 2pm in my office for a meeting and, when I called him, he’d gone to the Formula 1 qualification on the Saturday for the race on Sunday.

"He said: ‘Meetings in your office I can have every day but to see the Formula 1 is only once a year in Italy’. This is a funny situation. A couple of days later I had to laugh.”