Marseille defender Rod Fanni has compared Mario Balotelli to "Russian roulette" as the striker looks to get his career back on track with Nice.
Nice is Balotelli's smallest club in a stop-start career that saw him grab headlines as a mesmerizing 17-year-old for Inter Milan.
Pace, power, poise, skill, heading ability, strength back to goal and composure: Balotelli had absolutely everything. Except temperament.
"Balotelli is like Russian roulette," said Fanni, who could face him when Nice and Marseille play on Sunday.
"Everything's good if his head's in the right place, everything wrong if his mind is elsewhere."
It is nearly one year since Balotelli scored a league goal, embarrassing for someone who once talked himself up as a Golden Ball winner.
If selected on Sunday, he will look to end his drought in the home match against bitter southern rival Marseille, although Nice coach Lucien Favre is unsure whether he is ready.
"Things are going very well but we'll see if he plays," Favre said Friday at a prematch news conference. "He's very positive, he's listening."
In recent years, Balotelli's antics off the field have become his trademark, not his performances. Over the past two seasons, he has mustered two league goals -- one in 16 games for Liverpool and a terrible return of 1 in 20 when loaned back to Milan. It seemed normal when former Italy coach Antonio Conte left him out of his Euro 2016 squad.
Hardly the stuff of a Golden Ball contender, which was not lost on former Liverpool defender and teammate Jamie Carragher. He derided Balotelli's move to Nice, saying on Twitter that a free transfer was still "over the odds."
Carragher's sarcasm aside, one fact is hard to ignore: Balotelli is entering what should be his peak years at a mediocre French club.
"Ending up there, given all the clubs he could have played for ... it must have hurt his pride," Fanni said.
Liverpool, Milan and city-rival Inter have won 15 European Cups between them, but Nice won the last of its four league titles in 1959 and its last trophy was the French Cup in 1997. Stars like Ronaldo, Ronaldinho and Suarez have graced Milan's clubs and Liverpool.
The biggest name to play for Nice is Frenchman Just Fontaine -- the record scorer for a single edition of the World Cup with 13 goals -- and that was 60 years ago. Whether Balotelli can grab the spotlight in Nice -- for the right reasons -- is a very big question.
"He has a lot of rebuilding to do, physically but also in terms of the runs he makes, his movement," Favre said. "He hasn't played in friendly games and it's a long time since he played a match."
Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.