‘Overweight’ Diego Costa Takes Blame For Chelsea FC Start
Diego Costa returned to training in bad shape, he has admitted.
Chelsea FC have made a dire start to the season with just eight points coming from eight Premier League games. The team has so far failed to put in a performance that has born any semblance of last year’s double-winning displays. With the international break now upon us, it has afforded the Blues players and staff an opportunity to reflect and gather their thoughts. Diego Costa has done so by admitting that he turned up to pre-season training ‘overweight’.
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The striker has been left out of Vicente Del Bosque’s Spain squad after a string of poor performances and questionable antics. Costa, in a rare display of humility, has laid part of the blame for Chelsea’s start on himself.
"I was not on top of my game. At least physically… Maybe I got out of my diet and, when I came back, I was not the way I was supposed to be. I was a little bit overweight. That affected my game. You can be selfish and blame it on the manager but I’m not going to do that. I’m responsible 100%."
This goes some way to explain the lack of goals and energy coming from this Blues side. After winning both the Premier League and League Cup last season, pundits and fans alike have been struggling to legislate for the significant drop-off in results for a largely unchanged side.
Complacency has been one of the more reasonable arguments, and Costa’s comments only support the sentiment. The club reconvened for pre-season training much later than the others as a consequence of their 2014/15 campaign being extended by a post-season tour to the Far East and Australia. However, this meant that the players had very little time to get up to speed before the season started in earnest and turning up overweight certainly would not help.
Costa, meanwhile, also rightly distributes the guilt among the rest of the squad.
"We talk within the players and we know that, maybe at the beginning, we were not 100% as we were supposed to be when we got here."
The striker has been bad, but he has not been the worse player in the squad. All of them are looking slow and generally disinterested. The attitude has to change if Chelsea are to make any headway this season.
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Mourinho has also been questioned over his tactics and team selections, but Costa is staunchly defending his boss.
"If you ask a million players who they want as their manager, they will all come back with a top three list of Mourinho, [Pep] Guardiola and [Diego] Cholo Simeone…I have spoken to all of the players and they all feel the same way about José. I don’t like giving interviews, but I’m speaking for the group. We all feel the same way about Jose."
The Portuguese is one of the most successful tacticians of the 21st century, but some of his decisions in this campaign have been baffling. Having said that, in such dire times the whole club need to pull together. Thus Costa’s impassioned declaration of support for Mourinho is encouraging.
Everyone associated with Chelsea FC needs to rally around and push the team to a victory over Aston Villa when the Premier League returns next week.
All quotes taken from The Guardian.
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