After the Parisian victory this Sunday at the Vélodrome during the clasico (2-0) in Ligue 1, if there is a player at PSG to congratulate himself on having turned his back on 2020, it is undoubtedly Mauro Icardi.
After the first six months in the capital, where he had shown incredible efficiency, everything went a little askew for the Argentine.
Acquired definitively for 58 million euros (bonus included), last summer, the companion of the thunderous Wanda Nara has even completely disappeared from the radars in the heart of summer.
He crossed like a ghost the Final 8 of the Champions League, to the point of abandoning, then, the light to the young rookie Moise Kean.
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In Thomas Tuchel's mind, Rosario's child, Francesca and Isabella's full daddy, had become a lamp keeper.
His penchant for soda and not necessarily dietetic dishes had even cost him overweight stigmatized, half-heartedly, by a German technician with whom the link was weakened.
Sleeping for months, the instinct of finisher of the former interiorist, finally rid of recurring physical worries (injury to the internal lateral ligament of the right knee and then to the right adductors) has been awakened since January.
In an Orange Vélodrome, where we have dedicated a cult to scorers for decades, he showed, this Sunday evening, an intact cunning and lethality.
Holder against Barça?
On the center of Florenzi, he was able to walk Alvaro, guilty of a fairly elastic marking, to deflect the ball from the back of the skull and mystify Mandanda.
Everything Icardi comes down to this snapshot.
Like Cavani, before him, he has in his DNA this science of displacement, of the appeal / counter-appeal often fatal to his bodyguards.
He excels at attacking the blind side of the defender to better take the blow.
Also involved on the first goal, as the penultimate passer, he shows, in passing, his appetite for clasicos.
In October 2019, his double had precipitated the rout of the Phocaeans.
On January 13, more recently, during the Champions Trophy, he acted as a detonator by putting his club on the rails of success.
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Nine days before the trip to Barcelona, he is comfortably reinstalled in the shoes of a holder by his compatriot Mauricio Pochettino.
Even if he was less successful in the second half, inheriting a warning after a shock with Mandanda, he gave way to Neymar with the feeling of duty accomplished and a stats sheet showing five balls touched in the 18 m for four shots.
The work of the pro.