Paris (AFP)
After the happy ending of the interminable Neymar series, Paris signed on the gong one of the big shots of the transfer window: the PSG, deprived of its trio of attack "MCN" (Mbappé, Cavani, Neymar) for the first three Champions League matches, holds with Argentinean Mauro Icardi, a new scorer as prolific as controversial.
More than 120 goals in just over 220 matches with the nerazzurro jersey, named captain at 22, twice top scorer in Serie A and best player in the league in 2018: it's wondering how and why Mauro Icardi, 26 years, could be found still available a few hours from the end of the transfer window!
What's more for an amount (loan with option to buy 70 million euros, according to French and Italian media) finally reasonable given the current rates for players of this caliber.
Released from pressure from FC Barcelona in the soap opera Neymar, PSG and Leonardo have benefited from the end-of-Icardi clan and Inter, entangled in an open conflict in February and led both sides in the impasse.
At the origin of the case, difficulties in the negotiation of an extension of contract and a few sentences of Wanda Nara, wife and agent of the player, very present in the television media in Italy, badly perceived in the Milanese locker room.
- Psychodrama at Inter -
In a very brief statement, Inter had announced that Icardi was no longer the captain of the team. The player was then unavailable for a few weeks for a knee injury, the reality of which never seemed obvious to the nerazzurro medical staff.
Gradually reinstated, Icardi ended last season without shining and the situation did not settle during the summer. The club quickly made it known that the Argentine was not "part of the new project" of Inter, played by the new coach Antonio Conte and his recruits Romelu Lukaku and Alexis Sanchez.
Several clubs were interested in him this summer, Juventus Turin, AS Roma, Naples, Atletico Madrid, or Monaco, but nothing came to fruition and Paris arose at a time when the tension was still rising. a notch between Icardi and Inter.
At the end of last week, the Argentinean lawyers sent the Lombard club a 15-page letter requesting immediate reinstatement of all training and the payment of compensation of 1.5 million euros.
And Sunday, threatening banners appeared in front of the home of Icardi and Wanda Nara: "Icardi, now it's enough, Milan is small". Before the truce; Wanda Nara's car was also thrown by stone, while some of her children were on board.
- Future substitute of Cavani? -
On the technical level, it is a pure center-forward that recovers the PSG. After completing his training in Barcelona, where he arrived at 15 but where his profile did not fit the local habits, Icardi began his professional career with Sampdoria Genoa, where he played two years before joining Inter.
Merciless in front of the goal, impressive by the quality of his displacements in or around the surface of repair, the Argentine has the flair of the great scorers and remained on four consecutive seasons to more than 15 goals in the championship (22, 16, 24, 29) before the last, parasitized by the non-athlete.
For the return of Inter in the Champions League last season, he had also shown that he had the level for the top echelon with four goals in six games in a hen relieved (Barcelona, Tottenham and PSV Eindhoven).
Over the years, he has even a little expanded his technical palette, even if it remains above all a center-forward goalkeeper, like Cavani (at the end of the contract in the summer of 2020) ... that he might have to replace if his loan is successful this season.
If the Parisian fans should not expect to see him multiply the defensive folds like the Uruguayan idol of the Parc des Princes, remains to be seen how Thomas Tuchel will manage the cohabitation between the two South American scorers. In a cloakroom where two superstars already reign: Neymar and Mbappé.
© 2019 AFP