Surgery for Costa ruled out

LONDON: Diego Costa will not need an operation to solve his ongoing hamstring problem, Jose Mourinho claimed, as the Chelsea manager also insisted the forward will be selected for Saturday’s (today) home match against Stoke City.
Costa sat out Spain’s Euro 2016 qualifying win over Ukraine and then the 2-0 friendly defeat to the Netherlands over the last week, but Mourinho insisted that the best way to deal with the situation is with Chelsea’s current approach.
“To work as he does in the season, in prevention to make the muscle stronger, but at the same time elastic and flexible,” the Chelsea boss said.
“Recover well with no big accumulation of fatigue. This is what we do. We don’t believe in operations. Our medical department and myself, we believe an operation is the last resort for every injury, so we try and be conservative, to train and recover and try and compensate the problems.
“I don’t believe we’ll ever go in the surgery direction.
“It was the same injury, a hamstring, and he dedicated himself to recovering,” Mourinho said of Costa’s international absence.
“No days off, the medical department were saying. Morning, afternoon, working hard. We can say we did all the tests and scans to confirm, two days ago, scientifically the situation and at this moment the muscle is fine.
“But football is more than that: you need confidence, to believe that you don’t need to break your intensity and are free to express yourself at the maximum intensity, and that’s our doubt. “We’ll see the next 24 hours. But selected? That’s for sure