Former Inter Milan manager Frank de Boer believes Samir Handanovic is better suited to captaincy than actual club skipper Mauro Icardi.
The Argentine striker was already in possession of the captain’s armband when De Boer joined Inter in August 2016, with the former Dutch international allowing Icardi to remain as captain for his 14-game spell at the club.
However, De Boer has now admitted that he only allowed Icardi to retain his captaincy to keep a star player happy.
“I left it like that when I took over,” De Boer explained to Algemeen Dagblad (via Football Italia).
“That said, I certainly didn’t think Icardi was the best possible captain. There are things about him that aren’t really worthy of a captain, like arguing with his own fans.
“I left him the armband though, because you don’t want to lose an important player right away if you take over in the middle of pre-season.
“The biggest leader on the team is the goalkeeper, Samir Handanovic, but to be clear I never had any problems with Icardi, he always played his part.”
Despite De Boer’s admission, the 48-year-old still has a lot of admiration of Icardi’s abilities and is interested to see how PSV will deal with him when the two sides meet in the Champions League on Wednesday night.
He added: “I like him very much as a player. Right from the first training sessions you could see his ability, he scored from every angle with a good speed of execution.
“He’s scored 109 goals in 187 games, an average better than one in two. He’s been Serie A top-scorer twice in the past four years and that says it all.
“I’m very curious to see how PSV deal with him.”
Despite heavy investment over the summer, which saw the likes of Radja Nainggolan, Lautaro Martinez and Sime Vrsaljko move to the San Siro, Inter have mad a mixed start to the new Serie A season and currently sit in fourth place, seven points behind leaders Juventus.
The Nerazzurri’s next league game is against SPAL on Sunday.
The post Handanovic better suited to Inter captaincy than Icardi – De Boer appeared first on Squawka News.
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