Mata and Costa bring World Cup, Champions League and 72 internationals to Sydney derby

Juan Mata properly met Douglas Costa for the first time last month at a house inspection – in Tamarama.

“I went to check an apartment two or three days after I arrived,” says Mata. “We were a bit early, and waiting for the estate agent.” He gestures to Costa next to him. “Then he came down, because he was visiting the same apartment five minutes before.”

Neither got the lease in the end, but it was the first of three chance meetings within the space of three days. The second occurred walking down the street in Sydney’s east. The third, at a restaurant. “I think we got the same recommendations or something,” Mata says.

The fourth meeting is here, at CommBank Stadium, a week before the season-opening Sydney derby. Being playfully informed by their respective media managers they are not allowed to be friends come Saturday night, but jovially chatting away in Spanish nonetheless.

That each signed in quick succession on opposite sides of the city’s irresistibly antagonistic divide is living proof the joyful tit-for-tat is nowhere near dead. That both are in Australia at all is quite possibly the A-League Men’s biggest marketing win in more than a decade.

Both active supporter sections for this derby sold out in record time, almost a month before the fixture, and the rest of the tickets are almost gone.

Western Sydney say they’ve already received 86 media requests for Mata, from far and wide including British newspapers and Spanish radio. Sydney FC say they have stopped counting their email influx seeking out time with Costa.

But name-recognition one-upmanship is just one part of the equation. The other is more along the lines of: which ageing great will actually turn out to be the better signing? Saturday night, back at this venue, may offer the first sample of evidence.

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Despite their many years in Europe’s top leagues, Costa and Mata spent far more time circling around rather than actually playing each other.

“We did, I think. We should have,” says Mata with the upward inflection of a half-question. Costa wonders: “Maybe one was Manchester [United] and Shakhtar [Donetsk].” Mata replies: “I think Chelsea-Shakhtar.” They both agree it was indeed Chelsea v Shakhtar, in the group stage of the 2012-13 UEFA Champions League.

New frenemies Douglas Costa and Juan Mata.Credit: Rhett Wyman

“They had Fernandinho, Luiz Adriano, Willian and Douglas – four very good Brazilians,” adds Mata. Costa remembers it being “very cold” as he sat on the bench during the second leg in London – a 3-2 Chelsea win that came a couple of weeks after his Shakhtar had shocked them 2-1 in Donetsk, and a couple of weeks before the Blues sacked manager Roberto di Matteo.

The Italian, who had somehow steered Chelsea to the 2011-12 Champions League and FA Cups titles as interim boss, had held the position permanently for only six months. Still, he became owner Roman Abramovich’s seventh victim just as the club became the first defending Champions League holders to go out in the group phase. Shakhtar made the round of 16 before being overcome by Borussia Dortmund.

Now the pair are trying to work out if that was the one and only encounter, and there is back and forth for a bit as timelines are matched according to when Mata signed with Manchester United in 2014 and when Costa joined Bayern Munich in 2015. In the end, it is decided they did not share a field or opposing dugouts again.

But there is a clear mutual respect. Mata, for Costa’s “way of playing and many things that he’s done”, such as three Bundesliga titles with Bayern, three Serie A titles with Juventus, five Ukrainian titles with Shakhtar and 31 caps for Brazil.

Costa regularly watched Mata play for Spain partly because his friend and Bayern teammate, Thiago Alcântara, was a national teammate and partly because “I was following the good players”.

What was Mata’s best game, then? Perhaps the Euro 2012 final, when he came off the bench in the 87th minute and scored Spain’s fourth goal against Italy a minute later and leapt into the arms of Fernando Torres, who had provided the assist.

Costa likes this one, but Mata argues “that was short – not many minutes there”. Costa then ventures: “You won the World Cup. I don’t have that feeling.” Mata points out that Costa had played at a World Cup, getting game time for Brazil at Russia 2018 [in Brazil’s group-stage win over Costa Rica and the quarter-final loss to Belgium].

Juan Mata (left) with Raul Albiol, Carlos Marchena and Xabi Alonso after Spain’s 2010 World Cup victory in South Africa.Credit: Getty

Costa, for all his attacking pedigree, had been an unknown quantity until his impressive Sydney FC debut in last month’s 5-0 Asian Champions League 2 win over Eastern SC. The 34-year-old arrived following a forgettable six months at Brazilian club Fluminense, during which time the coach who recruited him was sacked and he played mostly as a sub and mostly under fan criticism.

At least he is already acclimatised to hard pitches, having already dealt with MLS turf-related injuries during his spell with LA Galaxy. “But now I’m OK,” he says. “I’m used to it.”

The obvious other adjustment is the Australian summer heat.

“Some of my teammates were talking about the 3pm starts, which they don’t do any more,” Mata says. “They say that, for example, Brisbane is quite hot in the summer, and Perth is humid with a time difference also. They say it’s challenging sometimes.” He shrugs. “In Japan it was also very hot and humid. We have to get used to it.”

Costa does not really need to get used to it, because “I’m from Brazil”. But even Brazil, he continues, has nothing on Bolivia. “The altitude,” he says. “You can’t breathe when you go to Bolivia. I never seen something like this.” He recalls Argentina’s 1-1 World Cup-qualifying draw in La Paz in 2013. Toiling at 3640 metres above sea level, Lionel Messi threw up mid-game and Angel Di Maria needed an oxygen mask.

Four years earlier, in a 2009 qualifier in La Paz, Diego Maradona’s Argentina were thrashed 6-1 by Bolivia. “They play with Messi, Di Maria, everybody – and they lost still,” Costa says.

Costa is embraced by fans after his Sydney FC debut last month.Credit: Getty Images

“So many teams lose there,” says Mata. “Even the ball moves different. You can hit the ball from far away and it flies much more.”

Mata’s most difficult outing isn’t related to turf, or heat, or even altitude. It was running on empty in that Champions League final of 2012. Chelsea, playing without the suspended John Terry (among others) and rarely threatening Bayern Munich’s goal, went down 1-0 after 83 minutes. In the 88th minute, the Blues won their first corner of the match, and Mata swung it in for Didier Drogba’s equaliser.

“We went to extra-time and we were … ” Mata pauses. “I mean, I don’t know how we won that game. But we run so much. I was half-hurt – my thigh was getting very tight – and I had to get through it because there’s no way I’m going to ask for a substitution in a Champions League final. It was very tough.”

Mata’s opening penalty was saved by Manuel Neuer, but Petr Cech saved two of his own, before Drogba buried the winning spot-kick.

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Once they have finished posing for photos, Costa tosses the ball (a standard portrait prop) in this direction. “You play?” he asks, then laughs at the response. “‘Little bit’ can mean anything.” It is clarified that “little bit” in this instance means “not very well at all”, and we get talking about other sports.

Have they ever played squash? “Yeah, yeah,” says Mata. “It’s hard. I prefer Padel.” He already knows there are courts in Sydney, and also knows this may not be an Alen Stajcic-approved extracurricular activity.

But he will spend this afternoon showing his visiting father (also named Juan) the sights around Sydney harbour. Right now, Juan senior is deep in conversation with Costa. Afterwards, Costa explains that it turns out they share a common acquaintance who manufactures shower heads in Brazil.

Mata has been building his international connections, too.

“After I left England, getting to know the world has been kind of important for me,” he says. “First in Istanbul, then in Japan, now here. I don’t know why I always had the curiosity of coming to Australia, but it has been in my head for some time. I spoke with an agent, and he got in touch with Scott.”

Juan Mata receives a warm welcome from Wanderers fans on arrival at Sydney airport.Credit: Peter Rae

Fortuitously, Mata himself had already met Wanderers chief executive Scott Hudson a few months earlier when they completed their FIFA Diploma in club management together alongside other well-knowns including Radamel Falcao, Cesc Fabregas, Tim Cahill and Angel City founder and president Julie Uhrman.

So the agent reconnected on his behalf, and the deal was done.

At 36, there is a sense Mata’s late-career criteria when weighing up his next club move has spread wider than the minutiae of game time and (even more) trophies and pay cheques (his one-year deal is worth a reported $350,000 - a bargain compared to the reported $2.9m and $1m Melbourne Victory and Sydney respectively splashed for Keisuke Honda and Bobo).

Now it is more about the bigger picture.

“To get to know different cultures, countries, societies, opens your mind,” he says. “It opens your mind and helps me grow as a human being, to have a wider perspective of how life can be lived – not just the way I lived my whole life in Spain or England.

“For example, it’s a big, big difference between Istanbul and Japan. The way that football is instilled in the culture of Turkey and the intensity and the passion is incredible, at the highest level. What it represents to people’s happiness or sadness is very, very high.

“In Japan it is different. It is not the biggest sport there – like here – so it doesn’t have as much relevance culturally and socially. But one similarity with Japan and here, I think, is that football clubs in the past were associated with different communities who migrated from different countries, like people that immigrated to the country. In Japan, I was surprised when I saw clubs having Italian or English [roots].

“So, it’s just nice to see the relevance of football in society generally, but also to get to know different languages – although Japanese and Turkish are difficult. And I try to research whenever I go to a new country or league, so I started to know what Sydney FC represents and what Wanderers represent, so that I know the rivalry and different parts of the city, culturally and socially.

“I love to make a decision based on, of course, competitiveness and hopefully winning the league here with the Wanderers, but also how you can live your life as a person.”

For Wanderers fans, of course, it is still very much about the soccer, and delight at Mata’s recruitment has been mixed with concern around form and fitness, given his age and lack of recent game time (10 minutes in the past 12 months, for Vissel Kobe). He spent a portion of his first press conference moving to allay this unease.

The month since has been spent acclimatising and learning from teammates and coach Stajcic about the style of soccer he can expect to play in the A-League Men. “From what I heard it’s very transitional, box to box,” he says. “A lot of chances, a lot of attacking situations. Not so much, maybe, control, tactically.”

Not like his days playing for Spain, with whom he won the 2010 World Cup and 2012 European Championships. He is convinced the latter was made possible because of a superstitious squad regimen involving hot chocolate and croissants in Pepe Reina’s room the night before every game.

“Which is not something you ideally want to hear if you’re a nutritionist or a doctor, but it made us be the family that we were,” he says. “Sometimes these little routines, they don’t seem so important. But they were key for us, for our togetherness to win, so I consider that very important.”

Mata joined a Wanderers team dinner a couple of weeks ago. The squad are much younger than him – the average age of this season’s squad is 23 – but he became somewhat used to that over the European summer while keeping fit with Danish side FC Nordsjælland.

“I think it’s the second-youngest team in Europe,” he says. “It was funny, one day I was in the shower and a couple of players came in. I asked ‘when were you born?’ They were born 2006, 2007. I thought ‘Jesus Christ’, and I just put the cold water on to make me feel younger. But it is what it is. Time doesn’t stop. The good thing is that I still enjoy waking up every day and going to training.”

Before training, there is breakfast. And over pretty traditional Australian fare of coffee, eggs, avocado and salmon on toast, he watches the overnight highlights from Europe.

“Normally I start with the Premier League,” he says. “Then La Liga. Then Serie A. Then if there’s Champions League, that also. Not ideal, because I want to watch the whole game, but because of time I cannot.”

He focuses on the teams he “feels closer to”. Which begs the obvious question: what is going wrong at Manchester United? “That’s for a different interview,” he smiles. “It’s difficult for me to see when they struggle. At the moment it’s tough, but we will be back.”