As Manchester City prepare to take on Chelsea this Sunday, much of the focus will be on the strikers. Sergio Aguero and Diego Costa were team-mates at Atletico Madrid, but as Adam Bate reports, the journey to the top has been rather more circuitous for the Chelsea man...
Saturday 20 September 2014 18:42, UK
With 64 goals between them last season, Sergio Aguero and Diego Costa are two of the game’s best strikers. Born just three months apart on opposite sides of the Argentina-Brazil border, they were even team-mates at Atletico Madrid. But the pair have taken very different routes to the top.
Even as a teenager, Aguero appeared anointed for success. Roberto Mancini’s wasn’t the only one to notice that Aguero was a “photocopy” of the great Romario. An Argentina international at 18, he was dating Diego Maradona’s daughter while still a teenager and by the time he was 20 he had fathered the great man’s first grandson. Footballing royalty in his homeland.
Costa’s story is rather different. It has been a battle. Unlike Aguero at Independiente, he enjoyed no success of note in his own country before heading to Europe. While Aguero was making his senior international debut against Brazil, Costa was on loan from Braga at Penafiel, a mid-table second division side in Portugal. Crowds there were in the hundreds rather than the thousands.
In the 2007/08 season he was scoring five goals for second tier Celta Vigo in Spain while Aguero was hitting 27 for Atletico in the capital. The Argentine’s reward was a place in the Olympic squad and a gold medal. Costa was farmed out to Albacete for another year of Segunda Liga action.
It wasn’t until 2010 that the forward got his first chance to show what he could for parent club Atletico. He’d missed the Europa League final win over Fulham that had capped the previous season, but had impressed enough on loan at Valladolid to be included in the squad by coach Quique Sanchez Flores. It offered the opportunity to link up with Aguero for the first time.
Ostensibly, Costa was still back up to both Aguero and Diego Forlan. After all, the pair had formed one of the most devastating partnerships in Europe over several seasons. But with Forlan’s fitness waning and his form dipping alarmingly following his heroics for Uruguay in the previous summer’s World Cup, Costa did get plenty of game time.
With the benefit of hindsight, it’s extraordinary how unremarkable the Aguero-Costa union proved to be for Atletico. In eight La Liga starts alongside each other, the Rojiblancos won three, drew two and lost three. Although Aguero found the net five times in those games, two of the goals came after Costa had been subbed and the big man himself went goalless throughout.
Asked to say which of Forlan and Costa he preferred playing with, Aguero diplomatically replied: “Diego.” He told Marca: “Both of them are very good players. I’ve felt very good with Diego Forlan since I arrived and now I’m playing with Diego Costa and we also play well together. Both are crucial to the team and contribute a lot.”
If that sounded like a political answer, Costa was rather more candid when discussing the challenge he’d faced. Speaking after both Aguero and Forlan had left the club at the end of the campaign, he told This is Atleti: “It was a brutal competition and a complicated thing. But I learned a lot from them. They are tremendous players.”
And yet, that season was not without its high points that hinted at the success that was to come. Most notably, with Aguero injured and Forlan left on the bench, there was a hat-trick in a 3-2 away win at Osasuna. Javier Matallanas, correspondent for AS, summed it up best. “The sublime Diego Costa was a battering ram – playing like Sergio Aguero and Diego Forlan rolled into one.”
Another loan followed as Radamel Falcao became the latest Atleti hero, while Aguero was making history in England by scoring the Premier League’s most famous goal. But after scoring 20 goals in support of Falcao during the 2012/13 season, the Colombian subsequently moved to Monaco and it finally happened. Costa got the chance to be the main man. He seized it emphatically.
“Every time a game is a little bit difficult he manages to find a chance,” said then Atletico player and current Chelsea team-mate Filipe Luis. “He reminds me of Kun Aguero at his best, sometimes the game was very blocked up and Kun would arrive and make a play and create a chance. Diego is like that, and more, he can pull a chance out of his hat, out of nothing.”
During last season, Costa did just that - on 36 separate occasions. He was the on-field inspiration behind what was surely the greatest year in the club’s history as Atletico won La Liga – the feat dubbed “impossible” by coach Diego Simeone – and came within seconds of a first ever Champions League triumph. Recognition at last.
“He went to Atletico and Sergio Aguero was the superstar, so Diego went on loan,” said Chelsea boss Jose Mourinho. “Then, they brought in Radamel Falcao – and Diego went out on loan. He was behind very important players. When the chance came to go back, he showed he was better than the previous ones.”
Whether Costa is better than Aguero is a matter for debate. What’s clear is that they go into this weekend’s clash between Manchester City and Chelsea as equals - star strikers at respective Premier League heavyweights – Aguero for the champions and Costa for the favourites. In a sense, Costa has already won the war in just getting to that stage. But it's difficult to believe he sees it that way. After all, there’s still another battle to be won. It's the only way he knows.
Watch Sergio Aguero and Diego Costa up against each other when Manchester City host Chelsea on Super Sunday (live on Sky Sports 1 HD, 4pm kick off)
