Player Focus: Inter Hopes Reliant on Icardi Influence Increasing

Andrea Mandorlini was a member of the record breaking Inter team that won the Scudetto under Giovanni Trapattoni at the end of the `80s. It’s a team to which the current Inter was compared at the beginning of the season when they won their opening five games for the first time since 1966. Now a coach at Verona, Mandorlini is going through the “toughest time” in his five years at the club. Still winless in Serie A this season and the only side to be so, Mandorlini admitted to “not having any answers” after Sunday’s defeat to Sampdoria.

Without doubt losing Luca Toni, their all-time top scorer and last season’s Capocannoniere, to a knee injury has definitely hurt. Verona’s whole identity since their promotion has been built around playing to serve the veteran striker and they have been rewarded. Toni has scored 46 goals in two years. Inter coach Roberto Mancini can certainly empathise. Upon reading the sports papers in Italy on Monday morning, you could be forgiven for thinking that he too had ‘lost’ the player with whom Toni shared the honour of being Serie A Capocannoniere last season; Mauro Icardi.

La Repubblica has declared him “missing in action.” Il Corriere della Sera believe he has “disappeared.”  When consulting the goalscoring charts you have to run your finger down and turn the page before finding his name. Eder of Sampdoria, the player Inter kept by the phone and desperately sought to sign on transfer deadline day, currently tops it with Napoli’s Gonzalo Higuain. They have seven league goals apiece. Icardi can count only two after nine rounds of the championship. The last one was at the end of September and of scant and easily forgotten consolation too as Inter lost heavily and for the first time this season, 4-1 to Fiorentina at San Siro.

It offers a stark contrast with this time last year. Icardi already had five in the league. He had put a hat-trick past Sassuolo and converted a couple of spot-kicks to clinch victories against Cesena and Samp. The Argentine boasted nine in all competitions. For a player whose instinct for goal is comparable with a shark finding a single drop of blood in the ocean, it’s curious to see his strike-rate go from that of an A-grade predator to being harmless.  

We perhaps should have known something was wrong when Icardi didn’t score against Juventus. He always scores against the Old Lady, celebrating six goals against her in the past. But should it really have come as a surprise that he didn’t when Inter only played the ball into the box five times in the Derby d’Italia? Juventus, by contrast, entered their opponent’s penalty area 24 times.

Icardi has now gone a month without scoring, a dry spell that isn’t as bad as it looks given there was an international fortnight in between. A week before his goal against Fiorentina he got the only one of the game away to Chievo at the Bentegodi, a remarkably deft and sang-froid finish even for him. Hitherto they have been desert flowers.

Saturday evening’s game in Palermo was the fifth time in eight appearances that Icardi has failed to even muster a shot on target. Believe it or not he is only averaging one every 211 minutes having had just 3 all season. Why so sterile? It does make you wonder if the injury he suffered on opening night in the warm up against Atalanta is playing on his mind. Icardi strained a muscle during a shooting drill. Mancini played him anyway but after quarter of an hour, his No.9 couldn’t continue and had to be replaced. Icardi wasn’t out for long. He missed the win at Carpi and then made his return after the international break in the Milan derby. But questions remain. While fit to play, it isn’t yet clear whether Icardi has recovered the power he had in that leg.

Another issue raised on this matter pertains to the captain’s armband. Is the added responsibility of wearing it placing too much pressure on Icardi? Truth be told, one of the 22-year-old’s defining characteristics has been to give the very convincing appearance that he never feels pressure so that is probably a moot point. But not scoring is evidently having some effect on him. “Like all strikers who don’t score, he is suffering a little,” Mancini revealed at the weekend. All the papers had Icardi down as Inter’s worst performer in their player ratings against Palermo. Were it not for Jeison Murillo’s red card he would likely have earned the lowest score from WhoScored too (6.29).

His movement in particular was criticised. In the first half, goalkeeper Samir Handanovic had just one touch fewer than Icardi (10). On the one hand, that was because he rarely got open. On the other, it was down to isolation and a lack of service. Chances don’t come easy to this Inter. The midfield is staffed by carpenters, not architects. Stevan Jovetic is the only thread that links it with the attack and Inter’s ranks 14th in the league with just nine goals in nine games ahead of their trip to Bologna. They have scored more than once only once, and that was against bottom club Carpi. Inter didn’t have a single shot on target in the opening 45 minutes at the Favorita. Palermo goalkeeper Stefano Sorrentino went untroubled until the 51st minute when Jovetic finally gave him something to do from a free-kick.

Apropos of Jovetic, his compatibility with Icardi has also been a subject of debate. La Gazzetta dello Sport has likened their on-field relationship to that between a wife and her new mother-in-law. La Repubblica went further still, joking that it was like getting Pandas to mate in captivity. Jovetic and Icardi don’t speak the same language at the moment. The many system changes, often in-game, from three at the back to a midfield diamond, 4-3-3 and 4-2-3-1 to 4-4-2 certainly haven’t helped. Nor has Inter going down to 10 against Fiorentina and Palermo. But the team dynamic has changed.

Last season, Inter played exclusively to serve Icardi. Now they like to get Jovetic in the game as much as possible. Icardi is less involved. JoJo has a different style to Rodrigo Palacio too. He plays behind rather than beside Icardi. He likes the ball at his feet and to run at and go past players. The longer he holds onto it, the more time defences have to close around Icardi. Even when he looks to pass to his teammate, he ends up surprising him rather than the defence. Palacio instead does a lot more of the off-the-ball work that opens things up for his fellow Argentine. He’ll often sacrifice himself, running in behind and pulling wide in order to stretch defences here, there and everywhere to create space for Icardi. He’ll appear beside him in the box and take defenders away from him.

Icardi and JoJo need time. Like Inter, who remain a work in progress. Only Handanovic, Guarin and Icardi were regulars last season. The rest are new. Some arrived early. Others late. Players are still getting familiar with one another and what Mancini wants. Partnerships are yet to develop. Not everyone is on the same wavelength. This doesn’t help Icardi.  But it’s clear that with a player of his potential in the team, Inter have great margin for improvement. Mancini has said that if they can get him scoring again, they will challenge for the Scudetto. Holders of the league’s best defence - which in and of itself is quite the achievement considering how unstable and porous Inter’s was last season - his attention must now turn to the attack.

Will the Icardi-Jovetic strike partnership come good at Inter? Let us know in the comments below