On Monday morning, Atletico Madrid revealed they plan to tour North and Latin America in the summer.
Fronting the announcement was Diego Costa, the club’s leading scorer this season. A special guest at the promotional event was Radamel Falcao, the Colombian striker, now of Monaco, and Atletico’s top marksman last season before his €65 million (Dh330m) transfer to the French club.
Falcao is recovering from a cruciate ligament injury, so he was free to visit his old teammates.
To see those two sharing a stage would ordinarily have made Atletico supporters nostalgic.
Costa and Falcao were quite a pair in 2012/13, the Colombian a brilliant spearhead, Costa his foil, making clever runs, creating space and opportunities for his partner. Yet Atletico miss Falcao only to a degree.
Among the many triumphs of head coach Diego Simeone this season has been to create a still stronger Atletico, post-Falcao – Costa the creator is now Costa the potent central striker.
He has 27 goals in a Spanish league Atletico sit top of with three matches left and is the likeliest source of what could be a deciding away goal at Chelsea, who Atletico meet on Wednesday night in the second leg of their Uefa Champions League semi-final after a goalless draw in the Madrid leg.
The presence of Costa at the summer tour launch provoked some questions. Would he be on the tour, or would he, like Falcao and most of the prolific Atletico strikers of the past decade – Fernando Torres, Sergio Aguero – by July have become the next big-money transfer out of a club who have large debts to service and find it hard to say no when fees of €30m (Dh185m)-plus are offered to them?
“I am very happy here,” he said.
Costa has a buyout clause of €38m (Dh235m) and, among those who find that a tempting price are ambitious Monaco, and Chelsea.
In the gritty, cagey first leg in Madrid last week, travelling Chelsea fans at one stage started singing Costa’s name and inviting him to make a future at Stamford Bridge.
He waved in their direction after the final whistle but claimed he had not understood the songs. “I heard my name but wasn’t sure what they were saying I was focused on the game,” he said.
He will, however, be well aware of the attention his superb season is generating.
He will appreciate it, too. At 25, Costa has gathered enough highs and lows and different gigs to qualify as a journeyman.
The story goes that, shortly after Simeone took over at Atletico in December 2011, he witnessed on a bus journey with the team to an away fixture, that the players cheered enthusiastically when a radio report announced that Costa had scored a goal in a match for Rayo Vallecano.
It was a habit for some of them as Rayo was the third club to which Atletico, who Costa joined in 2007, had sent him on loan.
Such a popular colleague ought not, thought Simeone, be out on loan. He decided it was time to make good on Atletico’s foresight in having spotted a teenage rough diamond in the Portuguese second division, playing for Penafiel, on loan from Sporting Braga.
Since acquiring him, they had loaned him to four different clubs and even sold him, with a buy-back clause, to another.
Simeone also saw Costa epitomising the kind of aggressive Atletico he wanted: the striker has something of the rogue in him, a hassler of defenders, a nag at referees, tough and often sneaky.
Simeone calls him “a tiger” and his teenage experiences in provincial Brazilian football and wanderings around unglamorous clubs in Iberia have hardened him. But with the spikiness, there is plenty of skill and assured touch: he times a volley beautifully.
Before Chelsea, Monaco, or any other big spender tries to acquire him, Spain will put him to work. The world champions intend Costa to be their main striker at the World Cup, having convinced him to commit to them – he qualifies for Spain by residency – rather than to his native Brazil, for whom he won two non-competitive caps last year.
That choice is viewed from Rio de Janeiro as somewhat opportunist and disloyal.
Chelsea fans will not mind if his opportunist streak brings him to London some time after the World Cup, although they would prefer Wednesday night’s first visit to Stamford Bridge to be a quiet one.
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