You can forgive Mircea Lucescu’s bitterness. After all, his employers recently sold one of the best footballers east of Germany to Bayern Munich.
Lucescu in August 2014, speaking to Italian sports daily Gazzetta dello Sport: “For me [Douglas Costa] is better than James Rodriguez…I’m just proud if one of my players goes to a big club.”
Lucescu in conversation with Bild last month, following Costa’s €30 million switch to the Bundesliga giants: “I think Costa is not yet strong enough for Bayern. [Franck] Ribery and [Arjen] Robben are at a different calibre.”
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Both points are debatable, but what’s clear is that Lucescu, the Shakhtar Donetsk manager, would have preferred to have kept the Brazil international in Ukraine for at least another season. Again, you can hardly blame him.
A high-speed dribbler with exceptional technical ability and a cannon of a left foot, Douglas Costa was part of five successive title-winning sides before Shakhtar conceded the Ukrainian Premier League to Dynamo Kiev last season. They’re keen to regain it (they currently trail table-topping Dynamo by two points) and make another indent in Europe as well, and they’d no doubt be better on both fronts with Costa in the ranks.
That said, the 24-year-old actually underperformed in the 2014-15 Champions League, and his reputation as an attacker who blows hot and cold was bolstered as a result.
Take his international exploits of 2009 for example.
At that year’s South American Youth Championship Costa, having just completed his move to Shakhtar from Gremio, was one of the standout talents of the Venezuela event, where he scored important winners against Uruguay and Colombia in the second stage.
But he generally disappointed at the FIFA U-20 World Cup seven months later, and although Alex Teixeira and Alan Kardec picked up his slack Brazil lost to Ghana, on penalties, in the final.
So do Bayern have another Xherdan Shaqiri on their hands? Is Costa destined for a supporting role and, eventually, an acrimonious exit from the club? (Shaqiri, who left Bayern for Inter Milan in January, completed a €17 million transfer to Stoke on Tuesday.)
Absolutely not.
Costa is more than a year older than Shaqiri, and he arrives at Allianz-Arena with seven years’ professional experience compared with the three the Switzerland international had to his name when he joined Bayern in 2012.
Back then Shaqiri was never going to displace either Robben or Ribery, both of whom were at the peak of their powers and would lead the club to the treble in 2013.
The circumstances for Costa are rather different.
Ribery, plagued by injury, played just 23 matches in all competitions last term and continues to struggle with a persistent ankle problem. He’s also 32, which suggests his best days are behind him.
Robben, meanwhile, only recently starting taking full training sessions following a frustrating campaign that was repeatedly interrupted by various joint and muscle injuries. At 31 he’s still impactful, but it’s highly unlikely he’ll play a full season in 2015-16—or even anything close.
Costa, as a result, could see significant playing time. He’s already featured against both Wolfsburg in the Super Cup and Nottingen in the DFB-Pokal, and he’s set to start at home to Hamburg in Friday’s Bundesliga opener.
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Bayern manager Pep Guardiola is certainly high on him.
“We have welcomed Douglas Costa into the team and you can already see what he will add to us,” the former Barcelona boss told Agence France-Presse during the club’s pre-season trip to China. “He has great one-on-one skills, he is strong, he gives us options and he will just keep on improving.”
And given his successful half-decade at Shakhtar he’s also accustomed to winning. All that remains to be seen is if he can transfer the skills that helped deliver that success and showcase them consistently at a top-level club.
He’ll have every opportunity to do so, which is more than Shaqiri could have said. A place in Bayern’s post-“Robbery” attack is his for the taking.
Jerrad Peters is a Winnipeg-based writer. Follow him on Twitter