Top Match Preview: Bacca-Icardi battle set to settle Milan derby
Mario Balotelli was among the spectators on Tuesday night as Italy played Germany at San Siro. “Whenever I enter this ground,” he said, “it’s like I am in a dream.” Named after the great Giuseppe Meazza, you can get lost in a reverie just thinking about some of the other wonderful strikers to tread the boards at the Scala del Calcio; from Zlatan, Ronaldo, Samuel Eto’o and Diego Milito to Andriy Shevchenko, Pippo Inzaghi, Bobo Vieri and Hernan Crespo, Oliver Bierhoff, Spillo Altobelli, Roberto Boninsegna and Gunnar Nordahl. The list goes on. Altafini! I forgot Jose Altafini and countless others.
With the Madonnina on the horizon, interest in Balotelli’s reaction to his interminable exile from the national team wasn’t the topic of conversation for long. After all, Andrea Belotti’s rich vein of form (22 goals in 2016) means Italy are not exactly crying out for a centre-forward at the moment. But I digress. Let's return to the little golden statuette atop the Duomo, after which this rivalry takes its name. A lifelong Milan fan, handed his big break by Inter, it’s one that Balotelli was once front and centre of. Marco Materazzi tells a story about him showing up for training one day in red and black socks. Matrix found a pair of scissors and cut them up.
Upon leaving Inter a treble winner before his 20th birthday it was surely inevitable Balotelli would one day play for Milan. “I’ve always supported them,” he reiterated on Tuesday, without making a prediction other than: “I hope football wins.” As a striker who combined for 47 goals for the Biscione and Diavolo, Balotelli’s opinion of their current centre-forwards was understandably in demand. “I played with Bacca. He reminds me of Inzaghi. He’s got no rivals when through on goal. I haven’t got any experience playing with Icardi, but the facts speak for themselves; he’s a natural goalscorer.”
One of them grew up in Colombia, copying everything Ronaldo did and shares his acceleration with him. The other moved between Argentina and Tenerife, sticking a poster of Gabriel Batistuta on his bedroom wall. If you’ve ever wondered why he hits the ball so hard into the top corner, there’s your answer. Living up to this rivalry’s long tradition of extraordinary strikers isn’t easy, but be sure Bacca and Icardi are worthy of it.
Lost in the fallout of Sinisa Mihajlovic’s dismissal, the disappointment of a seventh place finish and defeat in the Coppa Italia final was Bacca, a double Europa League winner, hitting 20 goals, 18 of which were in the league. He matched Paulo Dybala, out-scored Icardi and had a better first season in red and black than Zlatan, Inzaghi, George Weah and Jean-Pierre Papin.
While it’s true that times have changed and defences aren’t what they were in Italy, to score that many goals in a team that lacked in inspiration and created so little was commendable. And yet Milan were prepared to sacrifice him in the summer to raise enough money for new coach Vincenzo Montella to shape the team in his own image. A €30m move to West Ham was all arranged only for Bacca to turn it down. Left at home as they toured the US, Bacca dug his heels in even when Milan signed Serie B top scorer Gianluca Lapadula and pointed to the door. He ignored the signs and in the end, Milan came to their senses.
As a striker himself, Montella appreciated that, even with Lapadula on board, strikers like Bacca are hard to come by. Although Bacca isn't a natural fit for his style and the discussion about his compatibility is an ongoing one, he was prepared to adapt his coaching philosophy for the good of the team rather than his ego. This has been the story of Montella’s time at Milan more generally. Bacca duly delivered. He scored a hat-trick on the opening day of the season, the first by a Milan player since Giampaolo Pazzini five years ago. Left foot, right foot, header; it was perfect one and served as a reminder of how lethal Bacca is in front of goal. At that stage his 21 goals in Serie A had come with just 40 shots on target. Prior to the international break in October, his conversion rate of 33% was the highest in Italy since he arrived in the league.
Lower profile and less fawned over by the media, perhaps because he is 30 and doesn’t speak Italian, Bacca is no angel. Mihajlovic wanted to pull him up by the collar and hold him up against the dressing room wall for attempting frivolous rabonas, although, to Bacca's delight, he did score one in the Coppa Italia. He tossed his overcoat at Cristian Brocchi when substituted against Carpi towards the end of last season and was ejected from a training game by Montella this season after complaining that he didn’t get the ball enough. Dropped for the next match away at Sampdoria, Bacca came off the bench and got the only goal of the game with five minutes remaining.
If these fits of pique have largely passed unnoticed it is because they have been eclipsed by Icardi’s own transgressions. They include his wife, Wanda, taking to social media shortly after the club’s takeover to opportunistically demand a new contract barely a year after her husband’s last extension and the release of his biography, the contents of which led the Curva Nord to insist the captain’s armband be stripped from his bicep. Although Icardi received a fine and ordered the book to be reprinted without the offending passages, the ultras no longer recognise him as skipper. Bacca comes across like a choir boy by comparison.
The rest of San Siro - aside from the Milan end - is willing to forgive and forget. They appreciate that Icardi isn’t just Inter’s best player but one of the best finishers of his generation. The season before last he became the youngest Capocannoniere since Paolo Rossi in 1978. No one born after 1990 has scored as many goals as Icardi has in Serie A. His brace against Crotone made it 57 in blue and black, reaching Zlatan on Inter’s all-time top scorers list.
Heading the scoring charts at the moment, his 10 goals in Serie A have come with just 13 shots on target. Inter are much more dependent on him than Milan are on Bacca. Including his three assists, Icardi has had a hand in 81% of their goals. His all-round game, as beautifully demonstrated in the 2-1 win against Juventus, has notably improved and separates him from Bacca, who still receives criticism for doing nothing for the team other than finish off moves. Once beaten with that stick, Icardi is less so these days.
Now without a goal in six games, his worst drought in Italy, Bacca has a point to prove especially after Lapadula received an Italy call-up after replacing him against Palermo and scoring the winner with his first touch. That Milan haven’t suffered shows they are more of a team than Inter. Eight different players have got on the scoresheet for them. If Bacca cut a frustrated figure a fortnight ago, Icardi was in a state of grace. He will be fresh for the derby. Foolishly overlooked by Argentina, another international break has been spent recovering at Appiano Gentile. Bacca meanwhile has to fly back from South America albeit after playing only the final quarter of an hour for Colombia in Argentina.
Memories of January’s 3-0 win in the Madonnina, Milan’s biggest in five years, are fond ones for Bacca who marked his daughter’s birthday with a special goal. Hailed as a big game player, principally for the seven goals he has put past Juventus in eight appearances against them, Icardi is curiously still yet to score in a Madonnina. In fact, he missed a penalty against them last season. Still he’ll be more confident of breaking his duck should Alessio Romagnoli not be passed fit on Sunday, although wunderkind Gigio Donnarumma will still be standing between him and the goal. Bacca will presumably pick on Jeison Murillo instead of Miranda who returns to Italy with the self-esteem that comes from keeping back-to-back clean sheets against Messi and Higuain's Argentina and Peru.
Who will prevail? As the climax to a magnificent weekend of club football in Europe, the shoot-out between Bacca and Icardi in the Madonnina promises to save the best till last.
