Mario Balotelli is back making headlines after he offered a bar manager €2,000 if he drove his scooter into the sea.

The football star uploaded a video to his Instagram page in which the man, wearing nothing but his underwear, drives a metallic blue Vespa into the sea as onlookers laugh and cheer.

That bizarre decision was prompted by a wager offered by the Marseille player as he was walking down a promenade in Naples.

“The scooter was only worth €600,” the man later told reporters.

Video of the incident had been played more than 1.1 million times by the time of writing and prompted many to criticise the star for the environmental damage the submerged scooter would do.

A short while later, however, Balotelli published another video of the scooter being fished out of the sea.

“Here’s the scooter we fished out, philosophers,” he wrote at his critics.