Chelsea make €63 million bid for Inter Milan striker Mauro Icardi — report

On Wednesday we told you that Paris Saint-Germain was probably being used by Marcos Alonso’s agent to extract a better contract extension from Chelsea. Today it’s Chelsea’s turn to (most likely) be used by an agent to get a better deal.

The player is Argentina striker Mauro Icardi, the agent is his wife, Wanda Nara, and his club is Inter Milan. The story is that Chelsea have bid 63 million Euros for him. As with any decent rumor, there’s some logic to it. Icardi is 25 years old and he’s scored 22 goals in 25 Serie A games for Inter Milan this season. He’s been a goal machine for them since the 2014-15 season.

Photo by Emilio Andreoli/Getty Images

Chelsea, of course, have been having issues at striker since January of last year, when Diego Costa’s nose first got bent out of shape. So it’s plausible that the club would be looking to add goals to the squad.

Plausible, but perhaps not the most reasonable explanation for the rumors. Because even though Icardi is under contract through 2021 and signed an extension recently (including a reported £88m buyout), he’s trying to renegotiate again. First, Real Madrid were floated as a destination (or negotiating leverage.) Now it’s Chelsea, with this new story originating from Fernando Czyz of Argentinian newspaper La Nación.

Three problems with this story.

One, Czyz doesn’t have a sparkling reputation. Stick with us here, it gets a bit complicated. Last year Czyz claimed to have four sources who told him that Bolivia would win an appeal with the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) over fielding an ineligible player in World Cup qualification. Bottom line, it would help Argentina (Czyz’s audience) if Bolivia won their appeal. Czyz insisted they would. They didn’t. So his reporting has to be treated with caution.

Photo by Emilio Andreoli/Getty Images

Two, Icardi’s wife/agent has been open about trying to squeeze a better deal out of Inter. And three, the player himself has said he sees himself at Inter “when I am 30 years old.”

Ever heard of Occam’s Razor? It’s a maxim which states that “when presented with competing hypothetical answers to a problem, one should select the one that makes the fewest assumptions.” If you have two choices, go for the simpler one.

The simpler choice here is that having spent £58 million on Alvaro Morata and a further £18 million on (surprisingly good) Olivier Giroud, Chelsea probably aren’t in the market for a very expensive centre-forward. The simpler choice is that Icardi’s wife/agent is using us in a contract renegotiation. In other words, she’s just doing her job. More power to her.

And please, let this international break be over soon.