Chelsea’s power struggles loom over lingering Diego Costa transfer
Now that Nemanja Matic is at Manchester United, only Diego Costa remains on the “to transfer out” list. Chelsea’s long battles with player power complicate an already prolonged and unproductive situation.
Chelsea have cleaned house this off-season, sending 30 players on loan and transferring out a solid contingent of first-team players. Nemanja Matic was the first starting XI regular to leave Chelsea, reuniting with Jose Mourinho for £40 million. With Matic gone, only a few loans remaining and no apparent interest in new signings, Chelsea can now focus on resolving the Diego Costa situation.
Aside from Instagram posts partying in an Atletico jersey or jet-skiing with his dog, Diego Costa has been well off the radar this season. That may or may not work to Chelsea’s advantage.
On the one hand, Costa rarely appears in headlines that cast Chelsea in a good light. Even the jet-skiing dog post drew more attention to his unproductive and uncertain off-season than to the fact that, well, a dog was on a jet ski. No news is usually good news when Diego Costa is involved.
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On the other hand, Costa has not been in many transfer rumours this summer. Teams are not lining up to make Chelsea increasingly lucrative offers for their wantaway striker. Atletico Madrid is the destination by default, which does not give Chelsea much bargaining power.
Conte texted away a few million pounds with his “it’s over” message to Costa. That capped off their fractured relationship, going back to Costa’s attempts to force a substitution against Leicester. That incident compelled Conte to dig in and send a message, a process that repeated during the training ground row.
Given Conte’s personality and Chelsea’s history with player power, Conte could not permit Costa to usurp his authority. Like one of his distant predecessors, Tommy Docherty, Antonio Conte may come to regret his decision for its follow-on effects, despite having the backing of many fans.
Docherty disciplined a core group of players, sending them home from Germany for breaking a team curfew. His decision, though severe, was more palatable until the press became involved.
"A lot of the supporters backed Docherty because they thought he needed the authority. But he now regrets it because he fell out with many of the players… Other clubs have this problem, but it’s kept behind closed doors. By going public and tipping off the press, that really frustrated a lot of the players. Brave decision, but I think he regrets it. – Tim Rolls, The Blue Lions"
Antonio Conte should have suspected that his text message to Diego Costa would quickly go viral. He can have a chat with Kenedy about such things. By not handling things behind closed doors, he upped the stakes for everybody to save face and choose a side. Conte asserted his authority, but in a way that potentially alienated those whose support he would need in the locker room and on the board.
In the decades between Tommy Docherty and Antonio Conte, only Sir Alex Ferguson has been able to tamp down player power without jeopardizing his own position. Ferguson, though, is obviously an outlier for a multitude of reasons, not least of which is the fact that he started at Manchester United when the manager was still The Boss. Even ownership deferred to management, particularly Ferguson.
Antonio Conte has no such luxury or leeway. One of his first tasks at Chelsea was to reassert the position of the coach while building new relationships with and amongst his players. Player power had as much to do with Jose Mourinho’s sacking as any of his many missteps. Conte had to push back on that trend without encroaching on his bosses’ prerogatives.
Conte may not have succeeded in that in his first year. Chelsea’s board may still resent Conte’s history with Diego Costa. They may feel that Conte first backed them into a corner to transfer Costa and buy a new striker, and then compromised their position with the text. That conflict may play into the lack of transfer support they have given Conte.
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Neither side is particularly renowned for compromising. With one month remaining in the transfer window, Diego Costa is in limbo between these competing interests.