Chelsea may be unbeaten, resplendent and clear at the top of the table, but José Mourinho has already lost his first battle of the season. The manager’s instinct had been to preach caution when it came to Diego Costa, attempting to rein in a forward whose hamstrings are clearly prone to tweaks and whose absence for a prolonged spell of rehabilitation would be felt keenly by the fledgling league leaders.
In that context, Mourinho would normally have preferred the Spain international to have enjoyed a breather against Swansea City on Saturday, with one eye on Wednesday’s visit of Schalke in the Champions League, but the management is finding Costa as uncontainable as opposition defences these days. “He was a risk and a doubt before Everton, a risk and a doubt before Spain’s game, and a risk and a doubt before this game, and he played all three,” Mourinho said.
“He is a risk and a doubt again for Schalke because of the accumulation of matches, but nobody can stop him. I’ve tried. I tried to be sure. But he keeps going.”
Costa’s start to life at Chelsea has marked him out as a phenomenon. The numbers alone dictate as much: seven goals from four games; the first Chelsea player since 1928 to score in each of his first four matches for the club –and that total squeezed from 14 attempts. It took Andriy Shevchenko 41 games, and Fernando Torres 43, to register that many league goals for this club. It even took Didier Drogba 18. Yet Costa’s seamless adjustment to life in these surroundings merely confirms Mourinho’s insistence that Chelsea had been waiting for a player of his ilk to slot into an established system. They were in a holding pattern last season. Now their progression can gather pace.
The Brazil-born forward, like Drogba before him, arrives with his status established by one particularly eye-catching campaign – with the Ivorian it was at Marseille, with Costa at Alético Madrid – and a personality that can deal with the level of expectation upon him.
He may be adjusting to life in a new country still, but he is already a commanding presence in team and dressing room, a player who holds his own among big personalities as well as rugged centre-halves. He feels part of the collective, selfless in his work ethic and industrious in his input to the team. Mourinho suggested that marks him out almost as unusual among the elite.
“It is not about the modern player but modern society,” the manager said. “The education some players get, the people they have behind them making them be a little bit more selfish in the sense of ‘you first’ and ‘the team second’. But the concept that the team needs me and I’m ready to work … it’s not old-fashioned but, nowadays, when you get guys with that mentality they do become special. They can influence the people around them. Diego is a leader. He knows exactly what the team needs and is ready to give everything to the group. He is a fantastic character.”
He inspired with his finishing against Swansea – a thumped header and two calm, side-footed conversions – though the likes of Eden Hazard and Cesc Fàbregas, as well as Ramires after the interval, deserved as much credit for wresting back control of midfield. The visitors, their record unblemished before this fixture, had been imperious in that opening half-hour, when Ki Sung-yueng dictated the tempo. John Terry’s own-goal had given them a merited lead though their second reward, from Jonjo Shelvey, was a mere consolation after Costa and Loïc Rémy had benefited from their team’s increased tempo and aggression.
The Swansea manager, Garry Monk, had no reason to be downhearted, even in defeat. He had forced the leaders into changing their initial game plan after all. “And this is Chelsea we are playing, remember that,” he offered. “The players they’ve bought, and what they have cost … they are world-class. We all lose a bit of track of that because we have done so well. Just because we lost a game it isn’t all going to start crumbling, with us going down on our knees and crying. This is about improving, making sure we learn from the mistakes we made today. And my players will do that.”
Their team work ethic is as admirable as that of Chelsea’s, their club still upwardly mobile. For the home side, clear at the top, the early signs are that they have the pedigree to stay there.
Man of the match Diego Costa (Chelsea)