HANDS up who cannot wait to see Diego Costa back in Premier League action.
Because if anyone can make Wolves interesting, it is the Brazilian bruiser who could start a fight in an empty room.
Not since the days of Steve Bull has a player generated this much excitement at Molineux.
It is just a pity that ‘El Loco’ probably won’t be going head to head with human terminator Erling Haaland when Manchester City come calling tomorrow.
But it will only be a matter of time before Costa is ready to be unleashed on quivering defenders.
For even though he is only three weeks short of his 34th birthday and has not kicked a ball in anger all year, there is no way this ferocious competitor is about to change his win-at-all-costs approach to football.
READ MORE IN FOOTBALL
And heaven help his opponents when he gets back up to full speed some time after next week’s international break.
With Wolves’ summer signing Sasa Kalajdzic ruled out by a knee ligament injury, Costa’s arrival as a free agent is an absolute godsend for boss Bruno Lage.
Of course, it helps when Jorge Mendes is your agent and also the effective head of recruitment at Molineux.
But plenty of other teams were offered the opportunity to sign the former Chelsea hothead when he ripped up his contract at Atletico Mineiro last December.
Most read in Football
And not one of them was prepared to take a risk on a target man with almost 200 career goals to his credit.
But brave Bruno has stepped in where rival managers all feared to tread — and it is not just that snarling pack of wolves who will need a chain to hold them back in the coming weeks.
For this is a man who was twice hit with retrospective FA bans during his turbulent time at Chelsea, once for stamping on Liverpool’s Emre Can and the other for clawing at the face of Arsenal’s Laurent Koscielny.
The Spanish FA suspended him for eight games when he allegedly told a referee that he was going to defecate on his prostitute mother after Atletico Madrid lost to Barcelona.
Charming.
And Brazilian manager Luiz Felipe Scolari accused Costa of “destroying the dream of millions” when he turned his back on the national team to claim Spanish citizenship.
This is the man, don’t forget, who celebrated Mineiro’s domestic double last December by driving around the streets in a tractor.
So don’t expect anything less than full-on lunacy when he runs out for the 11th different club of his much-travelled career.
Welcome back, Diego.
We’ve missed you.
AMONG the many qualifications which new Chelsea boss Graham Potter brings to the job is a Masters degree in Emotional Intelligence from Leeds Beckett University.
Ironically, I have no idea what an Emotional Intelligence course involves. But I would imagine it will come in handy in his dealings with a highly sensitive owner who doesn’t take kindly to not getting his own way.
KNOWING how to maintain a sense of decorum following the death of a monarch has proved to be something of a dilemma for sport this week.
For instance, spectators at the Third Test at The Oval were banned from wearing fancy dress as a mark of respect.
But the most moving tribute came from Romford Ray Parlour, who took to social media to raise a Cobra Bomb (a shot of Jagermeister inside a Cobra beer) to Her Majesty.
He explained: “Even if she didn’t like Cobra, I’m sure she’ll be looking down and saying ‘Thanks Ray, I really appreciate that’.” He then wished good luck to “King Chiles the Third”.
It certainly brought a tear to my eye.
GOOD to see that Eton College ignored the FA’s blanket ban on all football last weekend.
The alma mater of Princes William and Harry argued that two games against fellow posh boys Rossall School were pre-season friendlies, so were outside FA jurisdiction.
And as any of the privileged elite will tell you, rules are for other people.
STILL no sign of Sir Jim Ratcliffe making his highly anticipated move to buy Manchester United from the Glazers.
If he really is Britain’s richest man, how come his current football team OGC Nice have been visiting the bargain bin on such a regular basis?
This summer they took Aaron Ramsey and Ross Barkley on free transfers, Nicolas Pepe, Joe Bryan and Mads Bech Sorensen on loan and Kasper Schmeichel for a nominal £800,000.
Not much bling there on the French Riviera.
So United fans dreaming of a billionaire benefactor to rival those at City, Newcastle and Chelsea might want to rein in their expectations of the publicity-shy tax exile.
IF anyone fully comprehends the dangers of boxing, it is Chris Eubank Sr.
It was 31 years ago the retired British middleweight star almost ended the life of Michael Watson in a brutal title fight which left his opponent in a coma for 40 days and requiring six brain operations.
So when the 56-year-old voices his concerns about his son’s clash with Conor Benn next month, surely the whole world should sit up and take notice.
Eubank believes both will be in danger, one because he is dropping too much weight and the other because he will face a much bigger opponent than ever before.
Yet those warnings have been pushed to one side by the promoters, TV rights holders and — to be fair — both fighters.
So now we can only hope and pray Eubank’s worst fears are not realised at The O2 on October 8.
FORMULA ONE’S ability to shoot themselves in the foot was on show again at the weekend.
The Italian Grand Prix finished behind the safety car and Max Verstappen won a fifth consecutive race — in second gear.
No wonder the pit lane is awash with conspiracy theories when the FIA appear to be making up the rules as they go along.
It is bad enough when these races are decided by the blokes who change the tyres the quickest.
But now it seems that absolutely nobody understands the complicated protocols for restarting races after a yellow flag.
So how long before all those young fans captivated by Netflix’s behind-the-scenes documentary series Drive to Survive lose interest in a sport seemingly determined to disappear up its own exhaust pipe?
Source: Soccer - thesun.co.uk
