CHARLOTTE N.C. — Despite a public saga surrounding his potential exit from the club, Inter manager Roberto Mancini says that forward Mauro Icardi will continue to wear the captain's armband for the Serie A side.
Icardi has been linked with moves to Napoli, which sold Gonzalo Higuain to Juventus earlier this week, and Arsenal, but while Roberto Mancini says he can't look into a crystal ball to see if Icardi will still be in his squad when the window closes, he says that for now the Argentine will still wear the captain's armband.
"Mauro is our captain," Mancini said after a 4-1 International Champions Cup defeat to Bayern Munich. "I don’t know what can happen in the future, but he is the captain."
Icardi came on with around 20 minutes left in the friendly and provided one of the few good moments for Inter on a day that saw Bayern ahead after just seven minutes and heading to the locker room with a 4-0 advantage. Icardi scored in the 90th minute to make sure that his club got on the scoreboard in a lopsided preseason contest. The Italian manager put down his club's rough day to a grueling preseason that his team faced without several regulars who are resting after taking part in Euro 2016 or the Copa America Centenario.
"(The only) positive things are that we didn’t concede any goals in the second half, and only this because it was a very difficult match, one of the reasons that it’s impossible to play with 11 players three games in six days, travel, very, very hard," Mancini said.
Among the players who didn't take part in games in the U.S. are Croatia midfielder Ivan Perisic, Chilean defender Gary Medel and new signing Ever Banega. The absences of key players makes the Inter manager feel better about the adverse result Saturday, with the team sure to get a boost from those players' return.
"We’re missing a lot of these players that are important players for us," Mancini said. "When we have all of them, I think it will improve the team or not. We will see if on the market we arrive at new players or not, but when you don’t have four, five important players in the first XI, it’s difficult."
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