“The way he changes from nice guy to brute on the pitch is the essence of Diego Costa”.
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London - No one has elbowed their way to the top quite as literally as Diego Costa. “I grew up thinking it was normal,” he once said when asked about his robust style. The arm out, the foot left in, he was at it again during Chelsea’s Capital One Cup semi-final win over Liverpool at Stamford Bridge on Tuesday night.
And having got him this far, he is unlikely to change now, even after he was charged on Wednesday night by the FA over his stamp on Liverpool’s Emre Can. No wonder comparisons are being drawn with Luis Suarez, another tempestuous South American whose Premier League career was marked by controversy and brilliant goalscoring feats.
Speak to Costa’s former coaches at the nine clubs he has represented in the past six years and listen to the voices of those who grew up around the headstrong youngster who was never schooled in any of Brazil’s academies or taken on by a club’s youth system, and the message is always one of wanting him on your side, as opposed to against you.
The sentiments are perhaps best summed up by Mario Suarez, who played alongside Costa when he was on loan at Celta Vigo in 2008 and shared a dressing room with him again at Atletico Madrid. “The way he changes from nice guy to brute on the pitch is the essence of Diego Costa,” he said.
That was in evidence when he appeared to spit into his glove and fling the spittle at Real Madrid’s Sergio Ramos during a clash between the Spanish rivals.
And last year, Costa’s family and friends told Canal Plus how their son was to be feared once the ball started rolling in the neighbourhood games he organised. “He was always a bit aggressive and we would say, ‘Calm down’,” said his father Jose de Jesus.
“They had to be on the same side for their own good or they would fight,” said Costa’s mum Josileide of Diego’s tussles with older brother Jair, who was considered the better player until his younger sibling began to fill out.
“The thing is he never went to a football school in Brazil, he only ever learned on the street,” explained Jair. “People would come from other neighbourhoods to play, sometimes they would turn up having had a few drinks and it could get violent.”
It was with that rough and ready football education behind him that Costa began to have trials, although the first one with Lagartense went so badly he almost turned his back on the game.
“I didn’t want to play football anymore,” he told El Pais. “I wanted to start earning some pocket money.”
He went to live in Sao Paulo, where he worked for his uncle Jarminho, making trips to the Paraguayan border to buy cheap replica brands and bring them back to sell. He was every bit as streetwise off the pitch as on it but was persuaded by his uncle to take a second trial, this time with Barcelona Esportivo Capela in Sao Paulo. He was accepted and soon a Portuguese agent working for Jorge Mendes was sent to watch him, although there was a disciplinary twist to his breakthrough.
He told El Pais: “I shouldn’t even have been playing in the game because I had picked up a four-month ban for hitting a rival and then going for the referee. But the day the Mendes scout came to watch me my coach told me: “I don’t know if it is an error but you have been cleared to play”.’
When Costa took his streetfighter style to Europe, there would be sparks, but the impressive thing about his rise is that he learned to stop getting sent off.
In his first 130 games in Spain he saw red six times and picked up 43 yellow cards. After a season on loan at Celta Vigo, he was sent to Albacete, also in Spain’s no-frills second division, and his reputation as a firebrand preceded him.
Luis Castelo was a journalist covering the club that season and is now Albacete’s head of communications.
“Costa was anarchic,” he says. “He was the wild man you see now, only then he didn’t know how to apply the brakes.
“He would take on all-comers, even team-mates sometimes, telling centre back Sebastian Corona he had put his boots on the wrong feet during one game when his clearances were all going out of play.”
But Costa’s personality was turning him into a leader.
Castelo says: ‘Albacete would probably have gone down had it not been for Diego that season. You could see he was destined for greater things. He played his way into the affections of everyone and he never forgot the club.
“Several years later, when Atletico faced Albacete in the Cup and were knocked out by the minnows, Costa went into the visitors’ dressing room and congratulated all the Albacete players for making it to the next round.”
He was sent off twice in his season at Albacete and by the time he moved on to Valladolid for his third loan spell, under the guidance of Jose Luis Mendilibar, he was learning to control himself. “He will always have that little bit of nastiness all strikers need,” says Mendilibar. “It is important he doesn’t lose that, but he’s clever with it now. He knows when to step back from the edge.”
Costa’s fourth loan club in Spain would be Rayo Vallecano. He had suffered a cruciate ligament injury at the start of the 2011-12 season but by January 2012 he was showing Rayo coach Jose Sandoval just what he was made of.
“When our sporting director Felipe Minambres said we had the chance to take a striker who hadn’t played for five months because of injury, I said, “Well, who is it?” As soon as he told me it was Costa, I said, “Give me the phone, I’ll call him myself”. I had faced him when he was at Albacete. I knew he could do a job for us.”
Costa came on at half-time in his first game and scored against Zaragoza, as well as getting two opponents booked. He was learning to make sure the yellow cards were not for him.
“Next game we played Getafe at home and his mum was there to watch him. He scored the second goal and I took him off before the end because I knew what would happen,’ says Sandoval.
“The whole stadium rose and sang his name. He came in next day and told me I’d made his mum the happiest person in the world.”
Costa went on to score 10 goals in the second half of the 2011-12 season and Sandoval says: “The players took to him. If he went down injured in a session on a Thursday there would be panic even among his rivals for a place. No-one wanted him unavailable.”
Some saw him as just a thuggish forward but Sandoval was well aware of Costa’s gifts.
“I was giving him a pep talk and telling him he could be in the top three in the world,” he says. “One of my assistants said, “Quite the picture you painted for him!” But I said I meant every word. If Costa got half a metre ahead it was impossible to stop him.”
Having become such a warrior on the pitch, two things were perhaps inevitable: firstly coach Diego Simeone would want Costa back at Atletico; secondly that his agent Mendes’s good friend and client, Jose Mourinho, would begin to think about how he could land Costa, if not for Real Madrid then certainly upon his return to Chelsea.
Costa became the symbol of defiance at Atletico as they won La Liga. His famous collision with a post during a game against Getafe had some supporters believing they might have to win the league without him.
But Simeone spoke about more damage having been done to the post. Costa had his family worried as they watched images of blood gushing from the wound in his leg. But while they fretted, Costa was videoing the treatment he was receiving and sending it to brother Jair. You can hear the physio saying: ‘OK Diego, you can see the bone but it’s all fine. Pass me the staple gun.’
Along with that fearlessness, Costa seems immune to criticism and that was just as well when in 2013 he turned his back on Brazil and pledged allegiance to Spain.
“If a Brazilian player wants to be left out of a game for his country ahead of a World Cup in his country then he is automatically discarded,” announced Brazil coach Luiz Felipe Scolari on national television when Costa defected.
“If Spain win the World Cup with a goal from Costa, it will be difficult for us,” his dad told Canal Plus. He needn’t have worried.
BBC Brazil editor Julio Gomes says: “I don’t think anyone really saw him as a traitor and those who follow European football see it as Scolari’s mistake.”
Now Costa is back in trouble for his antics at Stamford Bridge but at Chelsea he has found his home with Mourinho, who loves big personalities.
They don’t come much bigger than Diego Costa.
Daily Mail
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