Lol No: Tottenham considering a move for Mauro Icardi

Yesterday was a good example of why everybody should take transfer rumors with a grain of salt (maybe two, three, or the entire container of said salt). Now Gianluca Di Marzio has released a transfer story that seems a little...farfetched to begin with and highly unlikely to ever progress to anything serious. Typically I'd ignore this but given yesterday's tomfoolery I feel the need drag this story for the BS it is (is this me being petty? Yes it's me being petty)

So this report from Di Marzio states that Tottenham has sent representatives to meet with Icardi's agent over a possible move to North London. That's it. No claims that a deal has been struck, or that a medical is impending a la Pjaca, just a simple meeting. Easy enough to discount as nothing, right? Possibly not, because as we saw yesterday transfer rumors have a way of taking a life of their own. Plus I'm in the mood to pull out my knives and go all Hannibal Lecter and this is just the case of wrong story at the wrong time.

First of all, let's talk about Icardi's agent. Now typically an agent is solely concerned about finding a place where his client will either get the most money or the most playing time while occasionally (usually) thinking about how large a fee he will pocket from the transfer. The fact that Icardi's agent is his wife, Wana Nara, makes the priorities a little different. She will of course still care about his salary and playing time, but agent fees won't matter nearly as much. What will matter is where the Icardi family would be moving to. Right now Mrs. Nara lives in Milan, the fashion capital of the world and probably the best place for a rich supermodel. Y'all really think she's going to give that up for drab and dreary-assed England and its weather*?

Even if Wanda Nara somehow decided to not laugh Tottenham's representatives out of the building, Mauro himself would have to be convinced and good luck with that. Right now Icardi is loved and revered in the city of Milan. He would have to walk into London and prove himself to the fans there. It's not even clear if Mauricio Pochettino would change his system to play Icardi and Harry Kane together or if he plans to rotate the two of them. The only things Tottenham can offer Icardi is more money and a place in the Champions League. If Icardi wants more money he could probably get it here at Inter (especially with the new financial backing) plus the club is clearly determined to get back into the CL this coming season. Mauro is the captain of the best team in the city of Milan. Can you imagine him dealing with St. Totteringham Day year after year**?

Finally, assuming Icardi is convinced to join Pochettino's team, the club would have to acquiesce to a sale. Now, if you can recall back at the end of May, club president Erick Thohir spoke in an interview in which he mentioned his untouchables and Icardi was one of them. So even if Daniel Levy had picked up the phone and called Thohir a couple of weeks ago Thohir would have hesitated to sell the 23 year old, cause history has shown that the easiest way to piss off your fans is to promise a player won't get sold and then you go ahead and do it anyways. Now that there are new owners and stacks of cash to fall back on there is no way they would agree to a sale, even at the €45m price being thrown around. It has been made clear that Icardi is one of the leaders of this team, somebody that Mancini is building his squad around. In their presentation, the new owners waxed lyrically about how they plan to bring Inter back to the pinnacles of Italy and Europe, and last I checked selling one of your best players isn't how you go about that. So unless they plan to replace Icardi with a world class striker, Suning Holdings Group should know that selling Icardi ranks among the top 5 ways of ensuring their new fans loathe their guts.

So with that off my chest I feel confident in saying that this move will most definitely not happen.

*I personally have nothing against England (besides your whole Brexit debacle but we have Trump so I can't really judge), it's just when I decide to be this petty everything within a 5-mile radius risks getting some shade.

**I actually kinda like Tottenham, they're probably my favorite team in England, again they just got caught in the line of fire. Sorry?