Diego Costa, Soccer's Greatest Bastard

There is nothing to Diego Costa. He's a bully, a boulder, a Led Zep riff. You look at him and see thundering bigness, and then he's past you, alone with the keeper, slotting the ball inside the post. Other great players are easier to explain because there is something about them that needs explaining. Messi's touches in traffic are the sort of thing you can figure out only with a protractor and some graph paper. Zlatan is a moody swan-genius who willfully resists approbation despite sometimes seeming to yearn for it. Diego Costa runs, scores, and plays angry. He claims to be much calmer in real life. What he's like when he's alone with his thoughts might be the only mysterious thing about him.

Costa stomped on Emre Can's leg in Tuesday's Capital One Cup match. The Spain international is likely going to miss three games because of it—most crucially, this Saturday's match against Manchester City. The stomp was stupid and malicious, the sort of assholery Costa traffics in. This is a guy who flung boogers at Sergio Ramos, who nearly broke his shin on a goalpost chasing down a late-game tap-in, who was so infamous for calling his opponents' mothers mean names that hostile crowds in Spain serenaded him: "Diego Costa, Diego Costa, Diego Costa / You son of a bitch." He is not the understated type. He thirsts for violence and confrontation and usually finds it. Good for him, because it's fundamental to his soccer-playing identity.

It's curious that Costa's attempt to injure a Liverpool midfielder is being characterized as underhanded. "Dark arts" is a term reserved for players who try to goad others into cards and silly fouls through deception. Costa riles his adversaries, but sleight of hand doesn't work with a sledgehammer. Lots of defenders and attackers step on each others' heels behind the play and squabble during set pieces. Costa screams in the face of his opponents. He kicks and shoves and tantrums and grouses until the referee tells him in no uncertain terms to knock it off. Then he keeps on doing it.

He has always played with this edge. It took him five years and four loan spells to find his place at Atlético Madrid because he had a habit of losing himself to rage. You could see early in certain games that Costa was going to have a long and contentious night. His agitation would build rapidly. He wouldn't get service, then would try to bring himself into the game singlehandedly by putting in a late, ugly challenge on a center back. This usually marked the first incident in an ongoing row between Costa and the back line. Elbows were planted in backs, fingers in chests. Yellow cards came out. The problem was, Costa would get so preoccupied with these spats that he would drift out of the game entirely. Winning the fight took precedent over everything else.

He has only recently learned how to make winning the fight part of his overall strategy for success rather than an end in itself. What we see from Costa these days is actually a more disciplined version of what he once was. He has self-actualized. He knows he needs to feel his opponents' hate in order to overcome them. He applies his ferocity in service of that aim. He has been playing the role of barely hinged arch-antagonist for two-and-a-half years, and not coincidentally, scoring loads of goals in that span. The black mask suits him.

It's fitting in some respects that Costa plays for José Mourinho, whose villainy is a source of sport-wide philosophical debate—do you embrace the darkness or no?—but Costa lacks Mou's crucifixion complex. He doesn't even pretend to not enjoy what he is, the contempt in which people hold him. He is a gleeful brat. He gets what he asks for.

This brutal simplicity is a thing to like or dislike about Diego Costa. It is, in fact, the thing about him. Anything else is projection, reading too deeply into a shallow text. When Costa stepped on Emre Can's leg, he meant to hurt him. When he headbutts a defender, he means to intimidate him. When he breaks into a sprint, he means to receive the ball and score. He's subtle like a punch, and just as painful.