AC Milan are preparing a January offer for Manchester City striker Mario Balotelli.

Corriere dello Sport says a winter market swoop is being planned by Milan chiefs Silvio Berlusconi and Adriano Galliani.

Seeing Balotelli combine brilliantly with Stephan El Shaarawy for Italy, the club is eager to revive that rapport on a weekly basis.

However, as Berlusconi warned a few days ago, "top strikers are hard to get in the current economic crisis. We'd need them to make the situation with their clubs unsustainable first, like Ronaldinho did with Barcelona."