Player Focus: Mancini Moulding Bad Boy Icardi With Milan Derby in His Sights

Mauro Icardi likes a bit of DIY. Earlier this year he moved house with his wife Wanda Nara. “I’ve taken care of everything,” he told Sportweek. “I packed the boxes, unloaded them and built the furniture.” When it was put to the Inter striker that, as a millionaire, he could hire help, Icardi was having none of it. “I like doing it,” he said. “I’m always busy with something. Around midnight I might get the urge to put a cabinet together and so I just get on with it while everyone else is sleeping with all the allen keys and nuts and bolts.” Wanda has taken to calling him Manny Manitas, the Spanish equivalent of Bob the Builder.

When Icardi is at home more often than not his mind is not on football. Last summer, for instance, he didn’t fly to Brazil to take in the World Cup, nor did he stay glued to his TV to catch the action. “I watched almost nothing,” he admitted to La Repubblica. “Only Argentina’s last couple of games because they were important. I had a wedding to plan and other things to be getting on with. I thought about my life, not about football.” There’s so much more to it than kicking a ball around and Icardi’s right.

“Football is a sport I enjoy. I play it but that’s it. I know nothing about what’s going on around it… I don’t follow Serie A… The Coppa Italia? Even less…. I’ve always been this way. When I was at La Masia I lived practically behind the goal at the Camp Nou and on match-days I’d be in my room watching a film. I don’t think I’m the only one. There are loads of players who don’t really take much of an interest in football.”

To him it’s a job. A highly paid one. A business and a lucrative one at that. He appreciates the finer things. Icardi had M9 diamond earrings made and a rosary with his brand logo to match. He gets his threads from Philipp Plein, one of his sponsors. He tells the time with Audermars Piguet or Hublot watches. Icardi Instagrammed a diamond encrusted one, not on his wrist, but on the steering wheel of his white Lamborghini. A Rolex was wrapped around the Spirit of Ecstasy bonnet ornament of his Rolls Royce with the hashtag #BigBoysToys. His first car was a gold Hummer. Second-hand it must be said. Modesty is not his policy.

If you’ve got it, flaunt it. Considered ‘tamarro’, a bit naff, trashy, nouveau riche, is Icardi bothered that people think he has more money than sense not to mention style? Is he hell. He’s proud of it. “Tamarrissimo,” he posted. After all, his talent paid for it. He’s free to spend it as he pleases. Fans of a certain generation cringe at the flashiness, the bling, the too-much-too-soon generation. They can’t relate. It offends them as did the manner in which he was perceived to have cuckholded his former Sampdoria teammate Maxi Lopez.

The goading that went on didn’t reflect well on him. When he heard that Diego Maradona had said “in my day we would have taken it in turns to beat him up” had Icardi dared do what he did to Maxi, his reaction was a risata: howls of laughter. He’s a rapscallion, Icardi. A provocateur par excellence. And yet for all the brashness and the antagonising you can’t help but admire him. He’s got some nerve, a real cheek, but he’s such a loveable rogue.

The iconic image of Icardi is from this time last year. It’s of him under the Gradinata Sud at Marassi, one hand on his hip, the other to his ear. It was the ‘Wanda derby’. He had just opened the scoring against his former club Samp. Maxi, the poor guy, would miss a penalty. Meanwhile Icardi doubled his tally after the hour mark as Inter emerged triumphant 4-0 winners. Walter Mazzarri, his coach at the time, agreed it was unnecessary to stir things up and pour yet more fuel on a raging fire. But, hey, check out the cojones on this kid. He couldn’t help but marvel at Icardi’s strength of character, the thickness of his skin.

Asked about that day, the striker settles on one word: “Bellissimo” and once again laughs like a pantomime villain. “Forty thousand fans were against me and the more they insulted me, the more it pumped me up. That’s the way I am.” He rises to the big occasions. The higher the pressure, the more hostile the atmosphere and the better Icardi performs. “Look, I really don’t care about what’s going on around me and what the people say,” he added in La Repubblica. “I go on the pitch to do my job. That’s to score. If they want to talk, whistle and boo. Go ahead talk, whistle and boo. It goes in one ear and out the other. It’s my strength.”

Icardi won’t think twice about celebrating a goal under Milan’s Curva Sud in the Derby della Madonnina on Sunday. Oddly for him, he is still yet to score in the fixture. Icardi is a clutch player. One of the first goals he netted for Samp set them en route to promotion in the Serie B play-offs. He scored against Genoa in the Derby della Lanterna and was decisive in their improbable back-to-back wins against Juventus in 2013. Since moving to Inter, he has scored twice in the Derby d’Italia, one at San Siro, the other in Turin. January’s was emblematic. For an hour Inter didn’t create a single opportunity. But when one finally did arrive, Icardi seized it and got his team a point.

Listen to his reaction on playing against Gigi Buffon. “He’s a legendary goalkeeper but I don’t read too much into these things. All keepers are the same.” They’re there for him to beat. Nothing fazes him. Where others become more and more insecure and afraid of what they might lose as the stakes get higher, Icardi stays cool and composed. In this sense - and only this - Icardi has something of Diego Milito about him: he keeps his head when all around him are losing theirs. He scores big goals at big moments. “[Otherwise] we’re different in almost every way,” Milito told La Gazzetta. “He’s at his best in the penalty box. I used to get fed up of being alone in there after a while.”

Goal-hanging has been a regular criticism of Icardi: other than lurk around the area and score, the perception at times is that he does little else. Roberto Mancini even left him out of the starting lineup a few times to make the point that he had to become more of an all-rounder. The Inter coach likes to remind him of his own experience. Mancini would have scored a lot more for Samp and Lazio had he not been so selfless and set up the likes of Gianluca Vialli, Vincenzo Montella, and Marcelo Salas. But he would perhaps have won less too.

Fair play to Icardi, the message seems to have sunk in. He has three assists in his last five games. Away to Wolfsburg his no-look pass for Rodrigo Palacio, with whom a partnership is blossoming, was glorious. He returned the favour in Saturday’s 3-0 win against Verona after his compatriot had already set him up to score. Incidentally that was Icardi’s 21st goal of the season in all competitions. He has 16 in Serie A, one short of Capocannoniere Carlos Tevez, and the same total as Milan’s Jeremy Menez, which adds to the sense of anticipation ahead of Sunday’s derby.

As you might expect, 15 of Icardi’s strikes have come from inside the penalty area. 5 have been from inside the six-yard box. “It’s my lair,” Icardi explained. “I feel good there. But I now have to leave it more to help out my teammates.” Only Duvan Zapata (41.8) is averaging fewer touches per goal than Icardi (48.6) of players to score at least 5 goals, although the Inter No.9 has played a lot more. And of players with 10 or more strikes this season, only Miroslav Klose (37%) and Menez (22.2%) have a better conversion rate (19.3%).

It’s one of the reasons why, even though he is under contract until 2018, talks are underway about a new and improved deal. At the moment the likes of Dodo and Danilo D’Ambrosio make more than him, which doesn’t seem right when you consider Icardi, at 22, is already one of the most lethal finishers in Italy. Talking in a flash interview after scoring an ice-cold Panenka away to Napoli last month, Icardi said both parties were still far apart. Not Raheem Sterling apart, but it’s thought the stall is over image rights: €2.3m a year if Icardi retains control of them, €2.8m if he shares them with the club.

Mancini doesn’t want to lose him. After fearing that off the field distractions might lead Icardi down the same path as Mario Balotelli and Adriano, he recently told the Inter Channel no one has impressed him more since his return to the club. Once a bad boy himself, an enfant terrible, Mancini probably sees a little of himself in Icardi. Not the DIY enthusiast. But Bobby Gol is very much Bob the Builder at Inter right now and assembling a team around Icardi, or Manny Manitas as Wanda calls him, has to be his preference.

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