Mario Balotelli's agent believes having his client at Liverpool will be the biggest lesson of his career.

“Liverpool are different from other clubs," Mino Raiola told La Gazzetta dello Sport in a wide-ranging interview. “There, [because of Brendan Rodgers’s philosophy] they can’t allow themselves 10 players who run and a superstar [who doesn’t]. Mario is a player who changes a game for you in two or three moments, so they have to adapt to him and him to them.

“I saw him on Monday and said: ‘You’ve got a [long] contract and I’m not taking you away. Either you leave Liverpool for €60 million or €70 million and I win the bet or you die there’. It’s the first time that I’ve had such a conversation with a player. I saw that he was calm, changed, different with respect to at Milan. Very disappointed in himself too.

“He is going through times he’s never had before. Before everybody wanted him to do well. He had space. At Liverpool, no: either you do as we say or you stay out [of the team]. Then he was out injured for eight weeks. He lost rhythm.”

Raiola regrets ever letting him leave Manchester City to return to Italy.