Rickie Lambert on Mario Balotelli: Training Ground Turmoil

Rickie Lambert knew trouble when he saw it. And at Melwood, trouble often wore a mohawk and a grin.

The former Liverpool striker has previously lifted the lid on what it was really like sharing a training pitch with Mario Balotelli – and why he eventually begged Brendan Rodgers not to put them on the same side again.

Boyhood dream meets wild card

Lambert returned to Liverpool in the summer of 2014, a 32-year-old coming home to his boyhood club after Luis Suárez’s explosive exit to Barcelona. It was the move he had chased his whole career, having been released by the Reds as a schoolboy. He arrived desperate to prove he belonged.

Rodgers rebuilt his forward line. Alongside Lambert came Balotelli, then 24, a headline magnet from his days at Manchester City and Inter Milan. On paper, an unlikely partnership. In reality, it barely got off the ground.

Their attitudes in training could not have been further apart. Lambert grafted, trying to turn a romantic return into a real Anfield career. Balotelli, already infamous for treating football like a stage rather than a job, carried that reputation with him.

It showed quickly.

“Don’t put me on his team again”

Speaking on the Straight From the Off podcast in 2021, Lambert painted a vivid picture of Balotelli’s split personality.

"He was a good lad, childish but infectious," Lambert recalled. "But as soon as he stepped on the training pitch he became a different person.

"I've never seen anything like it, to be honest. At first, he gave everything when he played. But in training, I could tell he wasn’t giving his all. He was answering Brendan [Rodgers] back and my head went with that."

Balotelli’s attitude wouldn’t just grate. It cut across everything Lambert was trying to do. The Italian was starting ahead of him while, in Lambert’s eyes, not respecting the work on the training ground.

"The fact that he was playing in front of me didn’t bother me at first, I thought ‘I’ll get myself in’," Lambert said. "But just seeing the way he was in training, and then he was playing, it did affect me a little bit."

Eventually, he snapped.

"My head went with him in training and I had to go in and say to Brendan, ‘Don’t put me on his team again’. I think Stevie [Gerrard] had said the same."

When Steven Gerrard and Rickie Lambert both ask out of your five-a-side team, something is badly wrong.

The own-goal that said it all

By 2015, the Balotelli experiment at Liverpool was clearly failing. He scored just four goals in 28 appearances for the club before being sent out on loan to AC Milan in 2015, then moving on to Nice in 2016. His time at Anfield never really caught fire.

One training-ground moment summed it up.

As reported by the Evening Standard in August 2015, Balotelli stunned team-mates and staff when he lashed a "jaw-dropping" strike from the halfway line during a 10-v-10 game at Melwood. The problem? He smashed it past his own goalkeeper, Brad Jones.

Balotelli was playing for the weaker side in the session, likely made up of fringe players and substitutes ahead of a weekend clash with Arsenal. Frustration boiled over. Instead of channelling it, he turned it into an outrageous own goal.

It was pure Balotelli: outrageous talent, weaponised in the wrong direction.

A career defined by impulse

That refusal – or inability – to rein in his emotions came to define Balotelli’s stay on Merseyside, and arguably his career. From City to Milan to Liverpool and beyond, the pattern repeated: flashes of brilliance, undone by chaos.

By the time Liverpool cut their losses and moved him on, Lambert was still battling to justify his return, while Balotelli was already heading for his next stop. He now plays for Al-Ittifaq in the UAE, another chapter in a career that always felt like it should have delivered more.

Lambert’s Anfield story is one of a boyhood dream tested by harsh reality. Balotelli’s is of a phenomenon who, even on the training pitch, could turn a simple drill into a circus.

Liverpool moved on. The question that lingers is whether Balotelli ever truly did.