Spalletti: Wanda Nara was Icardi’s ‘weakness’, stripped him of armband ‘to keep team together’

MILAN, ITALY – MAY 26: Mauro Icardi of FC Internazionale claps the hands during the Serie A match between FC Internazionale and Empoli FC at Stadio Giuseppe Meazza on May 26, 2019 in Milan, Italy. (Photo by Gabriele Maltinti/Getty Images)

Former Inter coach Luciano Spalletti has revealed that stripping Mauro Icardi of the captaincy was the only way to ‘keep the team together’ after a bombshell statement from the striker’s then-wife and agent, Wanda Nara, caused turmoil in the dressing room.

Spalletti praised the Argentine as a ‘fantastic player’ during his two seasons in charge at San Siro, but off-pitch issues began to surface in his final year, ultimately forcing him to take decisive action.

“Mauro Icardi was the captain,” Spalletti recalled in his autobiography called ‘Il Paradiso esiste, ma quanta fatica,’ which translates into ‘The paradise exists, but what a struggle.’

“A fantastic player, a predator in the box like few others. I remember his beautiful goals in the derbies, especially the one he scored with a header in stoppage time from a Vecino cross. Mauro was a key figure in that Inter of mine.”

Spalletti explains why he stripped Icardi of Inter captaincy

However, at a time when Icardi was already struggling to match the scoring consistency of his previous seasons, comments made by Wanda Nara only added fuel to the fire, triggering unrest within the dressing room.

“That’s when I realised our captain’s weakness had a name: Wanda. And she was threatening to drag the whole group down. That was something I couldn’t allow.

“Mauro was going through a rough patch football-wise — things weren’t going his way. He wasn’t scoring like he used to.

“Then she said that if people wanted Icardi to score more, they needed to buy players who could help him do it. Better players, basically — that was the idea. Unbearable. A bombshell.

“One of those statements that can’t be brushed off with a WhatsApp message, an Instagram story or a like. To fix things, we needed to talk face to face, the old-fashioned way.

“There was only one way to avoid a war in the dressing room: Mauro Icardi had to apologise. But he never did.

“The next day, I asked him, in front of all his teammates, to explain Wanda Nara’s words — to justify them somehow. It seemed like the bare minimum, out of respect for everyone else.

“Mauro replied that it hadn’t been his wife Wanda speaking, but his agent Nara, and that she had done so solely in that role. It was an unmanageable situation. There was no way forward.

“I had to say a couple of things to him, take away the captain’s armband, and give it to Handanović. The club backed the decision — silently. Mauro took it badly. Very badly. In the end, to keep the team together, I lost Icardi — the man and the player.”

Both Spalletti and Icardi would leave Inter at the end of that season, with the former Nerazzurri captain making a move to PSG, before heading to Galatasaray in 2022, where he is currently playing.

The former Italy coach also described his tense relationship with Napoli owner Aurelio De Laurentiis in another passage of his book.