Chelsea manager Jose Mourinho believes that new signing Diego Costa is better than Manchester City’s Sergio Agüero and that the Spaniard brings with him the attacking bite that Chelsea were lacking last season.
Chelsea kick off their season away to newly promoted Burnley on Monday evening and know they will face a crowd full of passion and a team that will give them very little space and time on the ball.
Mourinho thinks that his new signings Diego Costa, Cesc Fabregas, Filipe Luis and Didier Drogba will be the grit that Chelsea needs in order to win the Premiership and is especially pleased with the way Costa has adapted at Stamford Bridge since his arrival from Atletico Madrid telling the Sunday People newspaper: “He was in Portugal and I never looked at him! He went to Atletico and Sergio Agüero was the ¬superstar, so Diego went on loan. 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.
“But he is still the same honest, naive, warm guy from a small village in Brazil that is, as we say, beyond the sunset.
“He ¬interacts in the group and has conversations… even though he knows only 10 words of English.”
When asked about having two goalkeepers competing for the start each week in Petr Cech and Thibaut Courtois Mourinho said: “The problem would be if I had no good goalkeepers.“Can we keep them both? Yes. We are Chelsea. We can.”
Stopping short of bragging about how good a season he sees Chelsea as having Mourinho added: “I believe there are five or six teams who will call themselves contenders, and all I’ll say is that we are contenders.
“There, all I can say is we are contenders. If we play good, if we play well and if someone finishes above us, then they are better and is no league in the world like this one where five or six teams can say that. that is ¬football.”
