In the middle of agents and football clubs, it is sometimes common to use an expression “Jesé Rodriguez category”. A beautiful tribute to one of the biggest fiascos in the history of PSG in terms of transfers: bought 25 million euros from Real Madrid in 2016, the Spanish international has almost never played with Paris (16 games in 4 years). Loaned four times in three and a half years to 4 different clubs, he clung to his lucrative contract, before resolving to finally leave in January 2021 for Las Palmas in Spain.
Seen from this angle, we say that PSG could not do worse and yet the Mauro Icardi case could push the football community to soon invent a new category “Mauro Icardi”.
His rating is at its lowest on the transfer market
Last March France Bleu Paris was confirmed that Mauro Icardi had been informed that the club wanted to part with him at the end of the season. The trend of a departure is still relevant, but it remains to know how to leave a player who is a thousand miles away from football at the moment.
Aged 29 and under contract until June 2024, the Argentinian earns 800,000 euros per month. A salary that makes you tick. “For a loan, no club will want to take such a salary and for a transfer they will never receive this sum again” explains a player’s agent to us and to continue “PSG will have to lend him by paying almost all of his salary or else he will have to sell him off, but given the purchase price…”. PSG indeed bought Mauro Icardi for more than 60 million euros in July 2020 after a year on paid loan. The rating on the transfer market for the Rosario man is now barely 20 million euros.
Three gently sloping seasons
When we take stock of Mauro Icardi’s three years at PSG, it is worth remembering that the one who arrived at PSG as the regular replacement for Edinson Cavani had a good first season overall in the capital club with 34 games and 20 goals.
The sequel is less flamboyant, despite 13 goals (none in the Champions League), injuries followed in the second season (2020-21) for a player whose lifestyle has often been singled out. The third season will confirm this trend.
Between his extra-marital problems spread out in the press, his absences from the locker room to try to save his couple and a letting go that some relatives of the Parisian group resemble depression, the PSG has therefore made the decision to get rid of his attacker. And it’s not the arrival of a new sporting director at PSG that should change the situation for a player. “too protected” by Leonardo and Mauricio Pochettino, we are told internally.
Which club to revive it?
In the Mauro Icardi file, we must never forget his agent and wife Wanda Nara Icardi. A central character in the career of the Argentinian, it is she who will have to find a base for the one she has violently charged on social networks during her extramarital slippages.
“Icardi, no club wants him in Italy right now” explains a journalist specializing in the transalpine market and a chain agent “He is too expensive and a lot of clubs think he has no or no sense in football anymore. And apart from a second-tier club in the English Premier League, I don’t see who can pay and try to revive him. He will enter the Jesé Rodriguez category. PSG will have to try to loan him to hope for a sporting awakening, while taking charge of his salary in large part.”
Currently on vacation in Rwanda where he is recharging his batteries with his wife. Mauro Icardi is expected to resume training on July 4 at PSG unless he finds a solution to revive himself.