Surprise, surprise. A player Jose Mourinho has gone great lengths to keep as fit as possible for his club team has seen the return of his hamstring injury just before he was set to leave for international duty.
Chelsea striker Diego Costa will go for further testing on his hamstring after the Chelsea manager said he picked up the knock in the 3-2 win against Hull City. Costa was replaced by eventual match-winner Loic Remy just after the half-hour mark and appeared to be limping off the field.
Mourinho made sure to point out that this recurring injury can crop up at any time, and it just so happened to be rearing its ugly head as Costa was set to be called in to international duty for Spain this week.
“We know his hamstring is not a strong one,” Mourinho said in his post-match press conference. “He works hard in the week to compensate for the weakness he has there but the injury can come. He tried to play the Champions League final for Atletico Madrid and was injured again and again and again. He has this fragility.”
Chelsea have been surprisingly fit for most of the season, with the biggest misses coming from Costa’s hamstring struggles, a knock to Cesc Fabregas in early 2015, and a suspension to Nemanja Matic. Otherwise, Mourinho for the most part has used his full compliment of players available to him. That makes it easier for Mourinho to say, “We have Remy and Drogba, we never cry about injured players so let’s move on.”
For all the injury problems Mourinho continually says Costa struggles with, he has missed just Premier League two matches back in October because of it. He has missed four other matches since, but they were all for suspension. Mourinho fought the Spanish national team for most of 2014 to keep Costa out of as much international duty as possible for fitness reasons.
Vicente del Bosque has called up 21-year-old Malaga striker Juanmi to replace Costa on the squad. They have a home Euro qualifier on Friday against Hungary before visiting the Netherlands for a friendly the following Tuesday.