Roberto Mancini has brushed aside the disappointment of failing to coax Fernando Torres away from Liverpool this summer by speaking of his confidence that Mario Balotelli will become a superior player to the Spaniard.
Torres was among Mancini's principal targets at the end of last season – "probably", the City manager replied when asked if he had ever felt close to getting his man – but the striker decided to stay at Anfield after several months in which he gave serious consideration to leaving Merseyside.
Mancini acknowledged it was a setback to City's ambitious plans to build the strongest team in English football but, preparing for Liverpool's visit to Eastlands tomorrow, he emphasised that Balotelli's £22.5m signing from Internazionale has softened the blow.
"In my view, Balotelli can be as good as Torres and even better," the City manager said. "That's because Torres can play only as a striker whereas Balotelli can play as a striker, a secondary striker, or a winger. He has a different attitude from Torres like that.
"Torres is a fantastic striker and it was difficult for Liverpool to sell him because he's such an important player for them, but we got Balotelli instead and this is good for us because he has everything you need to score a goal.
"He's quick, strong in the air, good technique, young; he has everything you need to be the best, and I think he is going to be more suited to the Premier League than the Italian championship. The defenders here do not know much about him, but they will see he can change everything about a game. He's very similar to [Carlos] Tevez like that."
Balotelli marked his debut by scoring the winner, as a second-half substitute, as City beat Timisoara in the first leg of their Europa League qualifier on Thursday. The 20-year-old picked up a knee injury but is confident of being involved against Roy Hodgson's side.
"In my view, there are eight or nine fantastic strikers in the world," Mancini said. "Torres and Balotelli are two of them, then there's [Zlatan] Ibrahimovic, [Cristiano] Ronaldo, Tevez, [Lionel] Messi. They're all fantastic players and we've managed to sign one of them, so we're very happy. Trying to sign players like that is very difficult because we're talking about fantastic footballers.
"I gave Mario his debut for Inter when he was 17 and I saw then that he can handle the pressure and expectation. I put him in the team for the last five games of Serie A, because we had Ibrahimovic injured, and he played like someone of 30 years."