Serie A’s top goalscorer will not be moving to the Chinese Super League anytime soon.
Mauro Icardi scored again to help Inter Milan come from behind to beat Chievo Verona 3-1 on Saturday, and his goalscoring rate is sure to be garnering attention among the new pacesetters in the global transfer market.
However, Icardi, who turns 24 on Thursday, insists he is not about to follow the likes of Carlos Tevez, Axel Witsel, Oscar, and John Obi Mikel to China.
«I renewed my contract at the beginning of the year and I’m happy to stay with this shirt,» Icardi said. «There’s always time to go to China at the end of my career. »
Icardi scored the equalizer in the 69th minute, volleying in Antonio Candreva’s stunning cross from the right.
Icardi’s 15th goal in 20 league matches moved him two clear of Roma forward Edin Dzeko and Torino’s Andrea Belotti in the goalscoring charts.
Icardi also had a hand in the winner, four minutes from time. He won the ball back in midfield and set up Ivan Perisic, who raced towards goal before firing past Stefano Sorrentino after the Chievo defenders backed away from him.
Eder topped the scoring in stoppage time.
Inter extended its winning run in the league to five matches and moved up to fifth, level on points with AC Milan, which has played two matches less than Stefano Pioli’s side and visits Torino on Monday. Chievo remained 11th.
«We had a great game,» Icardi said. «We’ve shown we have character for several games now. »
Inter dominated the match and only Sorrentino’s heroics in goal prevented it from taking the lead.
The 37-year-old goalkeeper made some fine stops, including twice preventing new signing Roberto Gagliardini from scoring on his debut.
At the other end, a fellow veteran gave Chievo a surprise lead, completely against the run of play, with the 37-year-old Sergio Pellissier volleying in a corner.
Pellissier almost doubled his tally in the opening minute of the second half but Inter goalkeeper Samir Handanovic got down smartly to beat away his effort.
Sorrentino made another fantastic stop to keep out Perisic’s header from point-blank range, and he also twice denied Eder before he was finally beaten.
Overall, Inter had 31 attempts on goal, 14 of which were on target.
Inter is nine points behind league leader Juventus, which visits Fiorentina on Sunday.
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CROTONE 0 BOLOGNA 1
Crotone looks ever more likely to go straight back down to Serie B after a 14th defeat of the season left it bottom, eight points from safety.
Bologna moved up to 14th, 13 points off the relegation zone after Blerim Dzemaili’s 51st-minute strike.

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(Ross D Franklin, AP)
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Washington — President-elect Donald Trump has hinted that he may lift sanctions on Russia and won’t stand by the «One China» policy unless Beijing improves its currency and trade practices.
Trump told The Wall Street Journal in an interview that he would keep intact «at least for a period of time» sanctions President Barack Obama’s administration imposed on Russia last month over Moscow’s alleged cyber attacks to influence the US election.
But, if Russia helps the US on key goals such as fighting violent extremists, Trump suggested he may scrap the punitive measures altogether.
He also said he was prepared to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin after taking office on January 20.
Trump, who sees an opportunity to co-operate with Moscow in fighting jihadist groups like the Islamic State, has expressed admiration for Putin and only reluctantly accepted US intelligence’s conclusion that Russian hackers acting on Putin’s authority interfered in the US elections.
Very rude
Turning to the longstanding US practice of not recognising Taiwan diplomatically, Trump said: «Everything is under negotiation, including One China. »
Trump has already irked China by accepting a congratulatory phone call from Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-Wen after he won the election, upending decades of diplomatic precedent in which the White House has foregone direct communication with the island’s leader.
He defended that move in his interview with the Journal, saying: «We sold them $2bn of military equipment last year. We can sell them $2bn of the latest and greatest military equipment but we’re not allowed to accept a phone call. First of all, it would have been very rude not to accept the phone call. »
Beijing considers the island to be a breakaway province to be brought back within its fold, by force if necessary.
Trump has threatened to get tough with what he sees as unfair Chinese trade practices and suggested that the «One China» policy could become a bargaining chip in other disputes.
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China’s foreign ministry said on Saturday that its «One China» principle was the non-negotiable political basis for China-U. S. relations, and urged «relevant parties» in the United States to recognize the sensitivity of the Taiwan issue.
The comments, posted on the foreign ministry’s website, were a direct response to remarks by U. S. President-elect Donald Trump in an interview with the Wall Street Journal in which he said the «One China» policy was negotiable.
Since 1979, the United States has acknowledged Taiwan as part of «one China», but Trump prompted a diplomatic protest from Beijing by accepting a congratulatory phone call on his election win from President Tsai Ing-wen of Taiwan on Dec. 2.

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China’s capital is notorious for its chronic pollution. Even indoors it’s a struggle to find clean air, says John Sudworth.
Having already taped most of my windows shut, I have now started on the air conditioning vents. The aim is simple — to close off every access point through which the toxic outside air leaks into our Beijing home.
Even our double-glazing doesn’t keep out the smog. The most dangerous constituent, particulate matter smaller than 2.5 microns in diameter — or PM2.5 as it’s known — finds a way through the tiniest of gaps where the windows close.
So the only solution there is duct tape.
It’s like a re-enactment of a 1970s government information film on surviving a nuclear holocaust. Only it’s not radiation we’re trying to keep at bay, but the fallout from fossil fuels.
The most useful device in our armoury is our PM2.5 monitor. We have two, one upstairs and one downstairs, which we glance at frequently, and it was their arrival that prompted the frenzy of taping and draught-excluding that continues to this day.
When I first arrived in China, five years ago, there was no way of monitoring the quality of air in our home. Like everyone else, we left it to blind faith that our air purifiers were doing the trick.
It now transpires they weren’t. Even now on highly polluted days, we struggle to get our PM2.5 count much below 25 micrograms per cubic meter, the World Health Organization’s maximum standard for safe air.
And that’s with multiple purifiers running at full tilt, large box-like machines that sit in the corner of every room — two in some — the combined noise output of which is akin to living in the engine room of an aircraft carrier.
China’s air pollution problem is now so bad that its effects are measured in more than a million premature deaths a year and markedly reduced life expectancy — an average of more than five years or so — in the worst-affected regions.
Over the past few weeks, a period of particularly acute and prolonged air pollution, the average air quality in Beijing has been well above 200 micrograms of PM2.5 particles per cubic metre — many times the maximum safe limit.
During the worst of it, it’s been like living under house arrest, our children confined to the small, deafening but breathable indoor space of our home for days on end.
And across China, the smog becomes a dominant topic on social media, with the population tracking the foulness of the air via mobile phone apps.
One group of Beijing mothers, armed with their own PM2.5 counters, have even been roaming the city in search of shopping malls or cafes with filtered air — and then sharing their discoveries online.
Of course, humanity’s dependence on oil and coal long predate China’s economic rise. But China offers a vision of environmental degradation far in excess of the pea-souper fogs of 1950s London or Manchester.
For much of the past month the cloud of toxic air hanging over this country has extended for thousands of miles, a giant, continent-sized cocktail of soot from coal fired power stations and car exhausts, smothering the lives and filling the lungs of hundreds of millions of people.
While growing awareness means that more of them are now taking action to protect their health, many others are either not fully informed about the danger or don’t have the means to do much about it.
A set of new filters for a single air purifier can cost £100 ($120) or more and needs changing every six months or so.
It is, of course, not a problem only of China’s making. The smartphones, computers, TV screens, jeans and shoes that have been pouring out of its factories over the past few decades are cheap, in part at least, precisely because they’re made without environmental safeguards.
The interests of the rich world and an unaccountable Chinese Communist elite have neatly dovetailed. The West gets its cheap consumer desirables and China gets rich without the inconvenience of the independent scrutiny, regulation or democratic oversight of other markets.
The true cost is measured by the numbers on my pollution monitors, and it is one being borne disproportionately by ordinary Chinese people.
Following a crackdown on a rare protest against pollution in the central city of Chengdu recently, one blogger dared to speak out in favour of the protesters. The police, he suggested, should bear in mind that the elites, whose interests they protect, have sent their families to breathe clean air overseas.
He was promptly detained.
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