Perhaps, with hindsight, we should have paid more attention to the title of Mauro Icardi’s new autobiography: ‘Sempre Avanti – Always Ahead’. For as long as he has been in the public consciousness, the striker has always carried an air of impatience, the manner of someone who is eager to skip forward to the next chapter.
This is a man who left his home in Argentina to join Barcelona at age 15, played his first Serie A game at 19 and was named Inter’s captain three years later. One who leapt eagerly – and very publicly – into a parental role when he took up with Wanda Nara, soon sharing intimate photographs of himself caring for her three sons by his former teammate Maxi Lopez. By 21, he had married Wanda, and within eight months, they had a daughter of their own.
So when Icardi stood smiling with the Inter directors Michael Bolingbroke and Piero Ausilio on October 7, holding up a special shirt to commemorate a new five-year contract extension, we ought already to have been asking: “What’s next?” The answer to that question arrived when his book hit the shelves little more than one week later.
In it, Icardi relives an episode from the 2014-15 season. After a 3-1 defeat away to Sassuolo, he had gone with Fredy Guarín to face the Ultras who had travelled to see the game. During a heated exchange, he handed over his shirt, only to have it thrown back at him. Icardi was seen cursing at his antagonists, but after heading down the tunnel later returned with more teammates for what appeared to be a more conciliatory dialogue.
The whole affair had largely been forgotten, until it popped up in the pages of his book. “I took off my shirt and shorts and gave them to a kid,” writes Icardi in an incendiary retelling. “It’s a shame that a head Ultra flew over to him, took the shirt from his hands and threw it after me with disgust. In that instant I was beside myself, I would have punched him for that b*****d’s gesture he’d just pulled.
“So I started to insult him harshly. ‘Piece of shit, you act the big man and all powerful with a little kid to show off in front of the Curva. You should only be ashamed. You should all be ashamed.’ After saying that, I threw the shirt in his face. In that moment, everything kicked off like the world was ending.”
Icardi goes on to claim that, “In the changing room, I was applauded like an idol”, even if the club’s directors expressed the fear that fans might wait outside his house for retribution.
 “But I was clear,” he continues, “I’m ready to face them one by one. Maybe they don’t know that I grew up in one of the South American neighbourhoods with the highest rates of crime and people killed in the street.
“How many of them are there? Fifty? A hundred? Two hundred? OK, record my message and let them hear it. I will bring 100 criminals from Argentina who will kill them on the spot.”
If that conversation did truly happen, then the directors in question were wise enough not to relay his words at the time. The lingering question is how Inter could possibly have permitted them to be published in a book 20 months later.
The backlash against Icardi from the Ultras was as inevitable as it was swift. First came a statement from the Curva Nord, which defined his version of events at the Mapei Stadium as: “Lies. Lies. Lies.”
It continued: “One concept must be clear to everyone. The Inter captain cannot allow himself these kinds of remarks. An individual like this cannot wear the captain’s armband.”
They may yet get their wish. No punitive action was taken by the club before Sunday’s game against Cagliari, with both Ausilio and the club vice-president Javier Zanetti stating that they intended to discuss the matter with cool heads on Monday morning. It is tempting to ask what took them so long, given that the book was launched at the start of last week. Is it possible that no director had even read it until the reaction became a furore?
Either way, the result was a toxic atmosphere at San Siro. Icardi had sought to calm the tension with a lengthy Instagram post in which he declared himself “surprised and sorry”.
 He insisted that he had only been trying to put across the heated atmosphere of that moment and how he himself had lost his head.
Icardi added that wearing the captain’s armband for Inter “represents the realisation of my childhood dreams”, and implored fans to support the team even if they could not support him.
The Curva Nord was in no mood for a reconciliation. A banner was hung with the message: “Icardi: you’re the b*****d, making shit up to sell more copies. You heinous mercenary.”
Another read: “You use a child to justify yourself and throw mud in our faces. You’re not a man … you’re not a captain … you’re just a cowardly piece of shit.”
The rest of the crowd, though, was divided. There were plenty of fans elsewhere in the stadium prepared to stand with their captain. When the Curva Nord whistled Icardi, some attempted to drown them out with a round of applause.
The situation came to a head in the 24th minute, when Icardi won a penalty. It was a bizarre scene from the start, the striker falling after contact with Bruno Alves in the box, but play continuing for a good 10 seconds before the referee Paolo Valeri whistled, seemingly on advice from his goal-line assistant.
When Icardi stroked the eventual spot-kick wide, San Siro’s divided sentiment only became more apparent. Some home supporters openly mocked him, happier to see him suffer than their own team take the lead.
Others attempted to encourage Icardi with a defiant ovation.
Obvious though it might seem to blame the tension inside the stadium for his miss, the truth is a little more nuanced; Icardi had already failed to convert two of his last three penalties in Serie A.
This was already Inter’s fifth defeat of the season in all competitions, albeit the first in which they had opened the scoring. A month removed from a brilliant win over Juventus, consistency remains an elusive goal for Frank De Boer.