Manchester City defender Vincent Kompany says Mario Balotelli will survive his bad publicity.
Kompany endured a similar experience when he was a dubbed a wonderkid at Anderlecht.
"Sometimes (laughs) he's a bit unlucky," he told the Daily Mail. "Sometimes we are all a bit unlucky if the stupid things we do are caught on camera.
"I was thinking recently about the problems he had and that I have had. I was in a situation like Mario once in Belgium. I arrived late for something. It got into the wrong people's ears and it became a silly story.
"I was actually late because I had been to my grandmother's funeral. But it blew up.
"At the time it fitted the picture that people wanted to have of me. But I thought to myself that whatever happened it wouldn't really change the world. That's what I thought. Mario must think like this.
"Things have happened [with other players] here in my time but it's more of a problem if you feel a situation isn't going to eventually evolve in a positive way.
"You very much know what to tell people to try and win a game and if they take it on board then they do and if they don't the manager or other people will take care of it. I let them take care of it and they did.
"I really believe that when you have a situation where someone is not right for the group then the manager or director has to take care of it. It's not up to the players. We have a strong group now, though."
