Each morning at work, as I sit down at my desk and switch on
the PC, I’m greeted by Diego Costa. Not quite by the man himself, but by a
sticker I stuck to the monitor stand when I started a few months ago. A white
silhouette on a royal blue background, his face screwed into a victorious scowl
and arms pumping, having just scored the final goal in Chelsea’s 6-3 victory at
Goodison Park back in 2014. The words “I go into battle. You come with me” are
stamped defiantly around the image. He’s there despite my Brazilian co-worker
pointedly telling me that he’s “not too popular” in Brazil these days.
He’s there because I have felt that my fortunes have been tied to Diego for some time now. I first saw him play for Chelsea in a pre-season friendly against Real Sociedad. He scored a striker’s goal with less than a minute on the clock and ran past me in the Shed, arms outstretched. My mouth was agape having spent previous years watching Torres, as much as I had loved him, struggle to recreate form he’d shown for Liverpool. A striker who scores goals!?At the time, I had just moved to London-proper. Away from the suburban commuter town of my childhood and into the bright lights. The excitement of a new job, new flat and new friends was coupled with the excitement of now being just an Overground train away from Stamford Bridge. Going along every other Saturday and, almost without fail, Diego would score. Oh how he scored. He smashed in a hat trick against Swansea and had seven goals in four league games.
In those heady days Chelsea fans desperately grasped for a
song. Something to suitably praise this new unstoppable force. Nothing seems to
have stuck, though. We’re left with perhaps the thing that suits the man best:
a relentless mantra of Diego, Diego, Diego. It urges him on and winds people up
just like the man himself.
Costa was there for the bad times too. Each tweaked
hamstring, run of bad form or FA disciplinary charge seemed to coincide with my
own missed targets, miserable Mondays and lack of cash. In last year’s
comparably glum disaster of a season, there were few positives. Our main
striker struggled for form just as the rest of the team did, and people began
to deride his temperament as an unnecessary burden. He’d apparently “never
settled”, didn’t show “passion for the club” and was one of the “rats” that
brought an end to Mourinho’s reign. Sour grapes, we never
wanted him anyway. Wasn’t Proper Chels. Threw bibs about when he didn’t get his
own way.
How sweet it
was then to see him score in the last minute against Man U last year. The
celebration too. No knee slide, no dance moves, just an outpouring of emotion.
Looking at the slow-motion replay of his mad face I later realised what he
looked like: a fan. If he was in the stands, you’d say he was giving it limbs.
In a moment of symmetry, the first teammate to him was our embodiment of old
school Chelsea. John Terry. Their passion was the same.
But Diego
didn’t come through Harlington like JT. At a time when equivalent players were
already honing their skills in gleaming academies, Diego was still in a
Brazilian backwater with no grass pitches and no official football team. He
played street football where “other neighbourhoods would turn up to play
having had a few drinks and it could get violent”. It wasn’t
until he was 16 that he began any sort of professionally organised football. In
the tournament where he won his big break, he wasn’t going to play, insisting
instead on working for his uncle. Only when his uncle offered to pay him for
the day regardless did he attend. When Sporting Braga offered him the chance to
play in Europe the next year, he told his mother “if you don’t let me go, I’ll
run away anyway”. So through impossible odds, we have him at Stamford Bridge,
scoring vital goals and terrifying all before him. A man who has fought for
everything in his 27 years and exactly the person to fight for us in a new era.
Seeing as our home ground was hardly a fortress last year, Diego would probably
be the scariest thing about playing Chelsea right now.
2016/17 on its way; emails ping back and
forth and office banter picks up in my new office. A suspicious amount comes my
way seeing as I support a mid-table side with an apparently wantaway striker
who’s past his best. Diego gets under your skin. In a race for beard
stroking rationality across Chelsea blogs, people have demanded that his temper
is reined in. Diet Diego. With the
incoming Conte, a fantastic man now famed for making death threats on the
touchline, I’m not sure this will be the case. I really do hope he stays
though. I hope his hamstrings stay strong. Above all, I hope he continues to
wind up the Arsenal fans in my office.
@JJReid13
