One of the more bizarre sights of the summer was Chelsea’s Diego Costa refusing to fly from his sabbatical in Brazil back to Cobham for the Blues’ pre-season training.
Clearly, his treatment by Antonio Conte was never going to see this proud Spanish-Brazilian ever pull on the shirt again, and if that meant a fine of a few hundred thousand pounds, it was a price worth paying if it meant securing a move back to his adopted home; Atletico Madrid.
As so often happens, the pantomime is played out in the media in the first instance, and Chelsea’s PR machine will have been working overtime to ensure that the supporters were left in no doubt that Costa was the bad guy.
It’s a tactic that is frequently used until such point as the weight of public opinion shifts and then the deal gets done. This one took a little longer than usual but there was never too much doubt that Costa would return to the Rojiblancos.
It’s a great deal for him personally, but Atleti are playing a dangerous game by harking back to a past that is not their present. The last time Costa was in town, he and Falcao were amongst the most feared strikers in the league, in a team that were going places.
Diego Simeone’s side are still a decent, ball-playing physical team with incredible will to win, but they’ve not improved sufficiently to be dining at football’s top table. What’s more, Cholo has had to accept that he will need to sell at least two players in January to allow for Costa’s re-introduction.
Furthermore, the expectation that he’ll hit the ground running once he starts playing again, could be some way wide of the mark. He only needs to see what’s happened to his old Atleti colleague, Arda Turan, at Barcelona.
His situation from a couple of years ago mirrors Costa’s current one, and alongside Aleix Vidal, also signed by Barca but not able to play for six months, Turan simply never recovered his previous form.
Half a year without competitive action isn’t quite professional suicide but Costa will have to work harder than ever before to ensure his competency before the resumption of the Champions League – assuming that Atleti are, again, in the latter stages of the competition.
By January, the player will be 29 years of age and the ‘other side’ of the supposed peak that a football player has, so attaining the level of fitness required, even with the help of the renowned Profe Ortega, is by no means a given.
High risk does sometimes bring high reward of course, but Atleti will have to keep everything crossed that’s the case with Costa.
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