City's European woes leave Balotelli feeling sick

MANCHESTER CITY may be putting the Premier League to the sword but the rest of Europe is less than daunted by Roberto Mancini's expensively assembled band of players, and a loss to Napoli last night left the Citizens on the verge of elimination from the Champions League.
 
Two goals from Edinson Cavani, either side of a Mario Balotelli strike, won the game for the Italian side and, as the equation stands, City need to beat Bayern Munich at the Etihad Stadium in their final game of the group and hope that Napoli fail to beat Villareal in Spain.
 
Mancini acknowledged that City were up against it. "I give 70 per cent chance to Napoli and 30 per cent chance to us [to go through]," he said. "It doesn't depend on us now, but we have to hope Villarreal get a result against Napoli."
 
"A failure to make it into the next stage ought not to represent a disaster," says Richard Williams in The Guardian. “But it would be a major setback in the planning for whatever kind of world domination the club's owner has in mind.”
 
In the Daily Mail, Martin Samuel says City are not yet ready for Europe. "If City could not handle this, how would they fare at the Nou Camp or in Istanbul? Probably, we will have to wait to find out."
 
As ever, Italian striker Mario Balotelli provided an intriguing sub-plot. It was his first match on Italian soil since he left Inter Milan last year and it came weeks after he was called as a witness in a police investigation into the Neopolitan mafia, the Camorra.
 
The Napoli fans welcomed him back to the city with an obscene banner containing a reference to his girlfriend Raffaella Fico, whose name has risqué overtones in Italian.
 
He then found the net, but as he walked off at half time he threw up on the pitch. He did return for the second half but was unable to make an impact. Afterwards Mancini said he was suffering from a "small fever". ·