It is one thing being wilfully eccentric when you are delivering. Quite another when your continuing failure to fulfil your potential means your presence in the team has come to be seen as indicative of the manager's lack of judgement. When a player starts to threaten the boss's own position, there is no more slack to be cut. Unless he is Fernando Torres, that is.
There is no doubt that, by his enfeebled performance, Balotelli is increasingly undermining his manager. His display in the Manchester derby on Sunday was pitiful.
A year on from his superb show against the same opponents – summed up with his memorable celebratory T-shirt "Why Always Me?" – he was removed from the action by Mancini, who was visibly furious at his lack of purpose. The only way we were going to see what message he had under his City shirt on Sunday was if he had thrown it off as he left the pitch.
What irritated Mancini most was the fact that, despite indulging him constantly, the player had refused to repay his faith by displaying even a tenth of the kind of match-winning skill he showed in the semi-final of the European Championship back in June. For a man who likes to be the centre of attention, on Sunday he was a waste of space.
But the thing about Balotelli that makes him so appealing, despite such woefulness, is that there is more to him than irritable inconsistency, more indeed than batty extravagance. More to him, moreover, than the generosity of spirit evident in stunts like paying for a bunch of homeless men to spend last Christmas in a luxury hotel. What is so endearing about him is that he appears to have an amused appreciation of the absurdity of his position.
Even as he stomped off the pitch at the Eithad, heading straight down the tunnel instead of to the bench, there seemed to be a smile playing under that scowl. Even if others are tearing their hair out about his faltering contribution, he is clearly more than enjoying himself.
And why not? If someone is prepared to pay him north of £7 million a year for performances that oscillate between the ineffectual and the inadequate, then why not drive down the road as he once did chucking much of it out of the window of his car.
As he said to a policeman investigating one of his several motoring prangs who asked why he had £5,000 in cash in his back pocket: "It's because I am rich". It was the only truthful answer in the circumstances. And it was evidence that here is someone prepared to treat the money hurled in his direction as it deserves to be treated: as a joke.
Still, it was probably not that aspect of his client that Raiola had in mind when he insisted in the interview that Balotelli was "more valuable than the Mona Lisa". Maybe so, though there is an argument after Sunday that Leonardo's masterpiece is more mobile in the box. Raiola also said that the striker will "fight to remain at Manchester City".
Now that is a tougher proposition. If he is going to do that – and in the process continue to keep us all amused – you suspect he will have to change a lot of perceptions at his club.
Show some effort, sweat a bit at training, even score a few goals. Perhaps the quickest way to re-establish himself in the manager's favour would be to display the kind of commitment weekly demonstrated by his team-mate Gareth Barry.
In fact, therein might lie the answer to his problem. Just like that cabbie, he could hire Barry to show him the way, shadow him at training, follow him into the gym.
After all, Balotelli is the paradigm of the modern footballer. And no one knows better than them that money can surely buy you everything.
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