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Diego Costa Scores A Brace As Chelsea Draw Swansea City In English Premier League

By Aayush Mahat
Published on: 00:13 PST, Sep 12, 2016

Antonio Conte’s 100 percent win record as the new Chelsea manager has come to an end after his side played an exciting 2-2 draw with Swansea City. Diego Costa scored twice for Chelsea, while Gylfi Sigurdsson and Leroy Fer were on target for Swansea.

With Chelsea showing fine form and Swansea City struggling to get a decent start to this season, it was expected to be a routine win for Chelsea. And for 57 minutes Swansea were headed towards their third consecutive defeat of the season, but all that changed courtesy of two goals in three second-half minutes for Swansea.

Conte selected the same starting XI that won 3-0 against Burnley in their last fixture. Courtois played between the post with a four-men defense comprising Ivanovic, Cahill, Terry, Azpilicueta. Summer signing Kante was given the responsibility to protect the back four from the holding midfield position. Oscar and Matic played in front of Kante with Willian and Hazard flanking them. Diego Costa was stationed as a lone forward, whereas deadline day signings David Luiz and Marcos Alonso remained on the bench.

Swansea manager Francesco Guidolin, on the other hand, chose to go with a defensive 5-4-1 formation with a compact midfield diamond. Fabianski was at the helm of the goal post. Fernandez, Amat, and Kingsley formed the core of defense supported by Taylor and Naughton in the wide areas. Cork anchored the midfield with Ki and Fer in support. Sigurdsson sat on the tip of the diamond and Llorente played as a lone striker.

As expected, Chelsea dominated the game from the start. Willian twice came close to scoring but was thwarted by Fabianski each time.

The breakthrough came in the 18th minute from the in-form Diego Costa. After Swansea failed to clear the ball in their box, Oscar found Costa with a pass. The Spanish forward sent a superb strike past the diving Fabianski to give Chelsea a deserved lead.

Chelsea were in total control of game launching forays of attack towards the Swansea goal, but were unable to double their tally in the first half. The dominance of Chelsea forced Guidolin to act and he abandoned the starting formation in the 41st minute, bringing on Modou barrow to replace Neil Taylor.

The change seemed to work as Swansea found the equalizer 13 minutes into the second half. Sigurdsson was at the receiving end of a reckless challenge by Courtois right inside the penalty area, leaving the referee no option but to point to the spot. Courtois also received a yellow card for his preventing a clear goal-scoring opportunity. Sigurdsson thumped the resulting penalty confidently into the middle, sending Courtois to his right. With this goal, he also became Swansea’s highest Premier League goal scorer.

Rejuvenated by the goal, Swansea took no time to take the lead. In the 62nd minute, Fer robbed Gary Cahill of the ball before squeezing the ball past Courtois for the second goal.

However, Costa then produced a moment of magic, an overhead scissors kick in the 81st minute to settle the scores. Neither team managed to add to the tally so both teams shared a point each.

Speaking after the game with the BBC, a discontented Conte lamented the loss of two points and also pointed out the referee’s mistake in Swansea’s second goal.

“People looking at the second goal can see that the referee made a mistake – but this can happen. I’ve not spoken to the referee. It’s a big mistake.”

“It’s very difficult to talk about the game because we lost two points. We were leading 1-0 and created a lot of chances to score another goal. We are disappointed because the performance was very good in terms of our intensity and because we played good football,” he bemoaned.

Meanwhile, Swansea boss Guidolin was happy to collect a point after trailing by a goal at halftime.

“I am happy with the result. My team played the second half with more energy against a very, strong team.”

He added, “After Chelsea’s first goal I saw my team not playing well and decided to change something before the end of the first half. I am sorry for Neil Taylor [getting substituted] but I decided this way because we needed a reaction.”

After this result, Chelsea remains second in the league standings with 10 points, whereas Swansea jumped to 13th with four points.

[Photo by Paul Gilham/Getty Images]

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