Dynastian98
10 years ago
He is a disgusting player, as I have always said. His two stomps were both deserving of red cards. They were completely intentional.
At the same time, he is a talented player, and one of Chelsea's biggest assets. His violence on the pitch not only puts him to shame, but taints Chelsea's image as a football club as well. Mourinho needs to make it clear that shoving and pushing the defenders is one thing, but stomping and punching should not be tolerated. Otherwise he will see no reason to stop doing these things, since he is clearly getting away with it.
Diego Costa, left, clashed with Liverpool's Jordan Henderson in the tunnel after last week's 1-1 draw at Anfield. Photograph: Carl
Perhaps the only surprising thing about the news Diego Costa and Jordan Henderson were involved in a tunnel bust-up after the first leg of the Capital One Cup semi-final
was that it had not happened sooner. The tension on the pitch had been
stewing nicely, the pair going nose-to-nose at one point like a pair of
posturing boxers at a weigh-in, all bravado and
my-dad-could-beat-up-your-dad, but waiting until later to take swings at
each other. While the details of the set-to did not exactly sound like
the most heinously violent of all time, with some pushing and shoving
but no punches thrown, that hardly seems to matter.
The point is that the pair were continuing the fine tradition of the
fixture, an uncommon rivalry full of needle that developed over those
years when Liverpool and Chelsea seemed to play each other every second
week, as the teams and supporters got to know then grew to despise each other.
Costa seems to be the perfect man to continue this tradition. He is
6ft 2in of walking aggro, a man just as ripe for a wind-up as he is
likely to do the winding. He’s the sort of player you hate if he plays
against you but wish with every bit of your soul he was in your team,
and not just because he is so good. Graeme Souness commented last week
that Arsenal were a team of “son in laws”, nice young men among whom
nary a rascal is to be found, and he did not mean it as a compliment.
Costa is the rascal’s rascal, poking and prodding and pushing and
generally just being an enormously entertaining bastard – but if he was
in your team, he would be your bastard.
“Diego Costa says he never takes his work home with him. Which is probably a good thing,” wrote Sid Lowe
of the Brazilian-Spaniard when he was at Atlético Madrid. “If he did,
he might walk through the door, goad the dog with a stick,
surreptitiously elbow his wife out of the way on the stairs, shrug his
shoulders innocently as she lay in a crumpled heap at the bottom and
whisper insults to his children, look the other way and whistle when
they burst into tears.”
Henderson is by no means the first player to attempt a square-go in
the tunnel with our man. A couple of years ago the Real Betis defender
Antonio Amaya made a rick that resulted in a goal for Costa, for which
he was extremely grateful, it seems. “He was shouting and thanking me
for the gift,” Amaya said. “If my team-mates had not held me back, I
would have killed him. That shows what kind of person he is: he has no
heart and no shame.” Damien Perquis, one of those team-mates, offered
the profound understatement: “Costa is a difficult player to put up
with.”
Quite so. He is a pest, an annoyance, the sort of player who
irritates you even before he scores a goal, which he has already done 17
times in 19 league starts this season. He is the sort of player whose
joy at scoring seems to be amplified by irking his opponents, and like
Jimmy “The Gent” Conway, you get the impression he roots for the bad
guys in the movies. His coach at Valladolid, José Luis Mendilibar, said
Costa had that “mala leche”, which translates as bad milk, but basically means an “edge, nastiness”.
Costa has become such a target that Fenerbahce’s Bruno Alves, the
Portuguese bruiser never shy of a robust challenge himself, laid a
two-foot reducer on him in a pre-season friendly, but this was only
after Costa had scored a quite brilliant solo goal, barrelling through
the Turkish defence like the boulder from Indiana Jones and finishing
unerringly. It was Costa in a nutshell.
Costa is now such a part of the Chelsea-Liverpool enmity the Kop had a
new song about him in the first leg last week – one that was not
especially complimentary about his appearance – but you wonder why they
bothered. If you try to rile him, it seems he will score, give you a
thump, engineer a sending-off, or possibly all three; whatever, it
probably is not going to end well for you.
Of course he probably could not get away with any of this if he was
not so good, but he very much is, and it’s the way he plays that makes
him most entertaining. He is rough in both senses of the word, and while
he has intelligence, a neat touch and scalpel-like accuracy in his
finishing, he does not have a massive amount of finesse but a largely
visceral, unpolished style that makes him stand out in a world where
technical proficiency is king.
“I wasn’t coached,” he said this season. “I think when you are
developed at an academy it shapes you and gives you a certain education.
You need discipline, so there is a downside of never having a formal
education, but there’s also advantages; you learn about the tricks of
the game quicker, and you become smarter by playing on the streets
against older guys.”
“Nobody gave Costa anything for free,” José Mourinho said after
signing him from Atlético in the summer. “He has always had to fight a
lot … he is not afraid of anything; he is ready for everything.”
Call him smart, call him dirty, call him a cheat. Diego Costa
is the sort of footballer we should all want to watch, hugely talented,
aggravation incarnate and absolutely perfect for Chelsea v Liverpool.
-http://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2015/jan/26/diego-costa-rascal-chelsea-liverpool-capital-one-cup-nick-miller
An interesting article from the Guardian about Costa. As the title suggest, and I believe it to be true, he's a great access for Chelsea but a pain in the ass for many other teams. What are your thoughts about him after todays Liverpool clash in the FA cup, in where he played rough even compared to his usual standards?
Diego Costa, left, clashed with Liverpool's Jordan Henderson in the
tunnel after last week's 1-1 draw at Anfield. Photograph: Carl
Recine/Action Images
Perhaps the only surprising thing about the news Diego Costa and Jordan Henderson were involved in a tunnel bust-up after the first leg of the Capital One Cup semi-final
was that it had not happened sooner. The tension on the pitch had been
stewing nicely, the pair going nose-to-nose at one point like a pair of
posturing boxers at a weigh-in, all bravado and
my-dad-could-beat-up-your-dad, but waiting until later to take swings at
each other. While the details of the set-to did not exactly sound like
the most heinously violent of all time, with some pushing and shoving
but no punches thrown, that hardly seems to matter.
The point is that the pair were continuing the fine tradition of the
fixture, an uncommon rivalry full of needle that developed over those
years when Liverpool and Chelsea seemed to play each other every second
week, as the teams and supporters got to know then grew to despise each other.
Costa seems to be the perfect man to continue this tradition. He is
6ft 2in of walking aggro, a man just as ripe for a wind-up as he is
likely to do the winding. He’s the sort of player you hate if he plays
against you but wish with every bit of your soul he was in your team,
and not just because he is so good. Graeme Souness commented last week
that Arsenal were a team of “son in laws”, nice young men among whom
nary a rascal is to be found, and he did not mean it as a compliment.
Costa is the rascal’s rascal, poking and prodding and pushing and
generally just being an enormously entertaining bastard – but if he was
in your team, he would be your bastard.
“Diego Costa says he never takes his work home with him. Which is probably a good thing,” wrote Sid Lowe
of the Brazilian-Spaniard when he was at Atlético Madrid. “If he did,
he might walk through the door, goad the dog with a stick,
surreptitiously elbow his wife out of the way on the stairs, shrug his
shoulders innocently as she lay in a crumpled heap at the bottom and
whisper insults to his children, look the other way and whistle when
they burst into tears.”
Henderson is by no means the first player to attempt a square-go in
the tunnel with our man. A couple of years ago the Real Betis defender
Antonio Amaya made a rick that resulted in a goal for Costa, for which
he was extremely grateful, it seems. “He was shouting and thanking me
for the gift,” Amaya said. “If my team-mates had not held me back, I
would have killed him. That shows what kind of person he is: he has no
heart and no shame.” Damien Perquis, one of those team-mates, offered
the profound understatement: “Costa is a difficult player to put up
with.”
Quite so. He is a pest, an annoyance, the sort of player who
irritates you even before he scores a goal, which he has already done 17
times in 19 league starts this season. He is the sort of player whose
joy at scoring seems to be amplified by irking his opponents, and like
Jimmy “The Gent” Conway, you get the impression he roots for the bad
guys in the movies. His coach at Valladolid, José Luis Mendilibar, said
Costa had that “mala leche”, which translates as bad milk, but basically means an “edge, nastiness”.
Costa has become such a target that Fenerbahce’s Bruno Alves, the
Portuguese bruiser never shy of a robust challenge himself, laid a
two-foot reducer on him in a pre-season friendly, but this was only
after Costa had scored a quite brilliant solo goal, barrelling through
the Turkish defence like the boulder from Indiana Jones and finishing
unerringly. It was Costa in a nutshell.
Costa is now such a part of the Chelsea-Liverpool enmity the Kop had a
new song about him in the first leg last week – one that was not
especially complimentary about his appearance – but you wonder why they
bothered. If you try to rile him, it seems he will score, give you a
thump, engineer a sending-off, or possibly all three; whatever, it
probably is not going to end well for you.
Of course he probably could not get away with any of this if he was
not so good, but he very much is, and it’s the way he plays that makes
him most entertaining. He is rough in both senses of the word, and while
he has intelligence, a neat touch and scalpel-like accuracy in his
finishing, he does not have a massive amount of finesse but a largely
visceral, unpolished style that makes him stand out in a world where
technical proficiency is king.
“I wasn’t coached,” he said this season. “I think when you are
developed at an academy it shapes you and gives you a certain education.
You need discipline, so there is a downside of never having a formal
education, but there’s also advantages; you learn about the tricks of
the game quicker, and you become smarter by playing on the streets
against older guys.”
“Nobody gave Costa anything for free,” José Mourinho said after
signing him from Atlético in the summer. “He has always had to fight a
lot … he is not afraid of anything; he is ready for everything.”
Call him smart, call him dirty, call him a cheat. Diego Costa
is the sort of footballer we should all want to watch, hugely talented,
aggravation incarnate and absolutely perfect for Chelsea v Liverpool.
-http://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2015/jan/26/diego-costa-rascal-chelsea-liverpool-capital-one-cup-nick-miller
An interesting article from the Guardian about Costa. As the title suggest, and I believe it to be true, he's a great access for Chelsea but a pain in the ass for many other teams. What are your thoughts about him after todays Liverpool clash in the FA cup, in where he played rough even compared to his usual standards?