Diego Costa admitted he was “scared to death”. Not, admittedly, by the prospect of Premier League defenders, by the sight of a fixture list that could contain clashes with such frightening figures as John Stones, Cesar Azpilicueta and Steve Cook; after all, the heyday of the hatchet man has passed, with most outlawed into extinction by more stringent refereeing.
No, perhaps the most deliberately intimidating striker in recent Premier League history was terrified by his co-stars in a moody masterpiece of an unveiling video: a pack of wolves. “Holding that chain, I kept thinking, 'What if this wolf thinks about jumping on top of me?' and then three of them did,” Costa said; a debut against Manchester City on Saturday is only possible because he survived the experience.
His past and his reputation meant he had to suffer. His new employers seized the opportunity to announce the signing of a footballer indelibly associated with ferocity. There may be no more perfect synergy of a player and a club’s nickname than Costa and Wolves. A couple of years ago, Jose Mourinho described him as an “animal”. It was a compliment. Bruno Lage’s wolf pack have felt too nice to merit the term, these neat, technically accomplished passers who appeared inoffensive. Costa always offered the threat of random violence and the promise of menace even if his tally of Premier League red cards actually stands at zero. Somehow, the striker he is now understudying, the enviably amiable Raul Jimenez, was sent off twice himself. Implausibly, perhaps the Mexican is the bad boy of the double act.
But Costa’s return to England may be welcomed by those who felt the Premier League had become too refined in his absence. Costa is back, ready to bring an idiosyncratic blend of snidery and shithousery, intent on conducting running battles, turning football matches into grudge matches while also scoring goals.
Whether he can still do the more prosaic part and find the net is a moot point. Given their barren spells, Wolves actually need a prolific forward more than a provocative one. They have contrived to average under a goal a game over their last 102 Premier League matches. These particular Wolves have lacked bite.
Costa is an eye-catching addition, his outsized personality making him the antidote to many of his new and quieter teammates. The reality is that he is also a signing stemming from desperation. He was just above Andy Carroll on the shortlist of the free and unwanted they compiled when the deadline-day buy Sasa Kalajdzic was injured on his debut.
Costa has not played in 2022. He has made 19 appearances in 20 months. In more than five years since his last Chelsea appearance, he has played 100 club games and only scored 24 goals. A late developer also seems to have declined early. In between, he was brilliant. His peak came in a five-season period between 2012 and 2017 when he reached the Champions League final and won La Liga with Atletico Madrid, claimed two Premier League titles with Chelsea and scored 115 goals. He was a totemic, talismanic figure, the bruiser who led from the front.
He was probably the last quintessential Mourinho player, with his hints of malevolence, fondness for confrontation and willingness to be unpopular. He was a still more archetypal Diego Simeone footballer, a snarling warrior who felt a face of pragmatism, even if some of his feuds were more personal than pragmatic. Along the way, teammates suggested Costa was actually a pleasant type and a joker, but those were not images he often portrayed on the pitch.
There is a case for saying Chelsea have never properly replaced him: given Costa’s attempts to league for much of the 2016-17 season and his subsequent decline, Antonio Conte may have been right to discard him, though a 27-word text message to inform the striker he was not in his plans was an undignified way to end an explosive Chelsea career.
Since then, the shift in footballing fashions has meant his prime has felt more like another era. Subsequent Premier League champions have had a sleeker striker, in Sergio Aguero, or false nines, not a Costa-type target man. Wolves may require a penalty-box presence, someone with aerial ability and a foil to their flair players, though they also need the finisher Jimenez was before he fractured his skull.
Part of the concern with Costa is that his game relied on a physicality that age, inactivity and general decay have dented. There is a comparison with a former teammate, also born in Brazil, also reliant on his power and now in his dotage: Willian was hugely effective for Chelsea, utterly ineffective for Arsenal as he lost some of his speed and has now returned to the Premier League with Fulham. He, too, was signed on a free transfer, after the window had shut, after a forgettable spell in his homeland.
The Premier League can stage some unlikely comebacks; if Costa’s return feels improbable, however, the stranger part may be if he can recapture the brilliance he showed for Chelsea. The division’s throwback villain will aim to be the force of old but may just look a curious anachronism.
