Tag Archives: Dante Costa

Top Ligue 1 Defenders in 2018/19: Dante Costa

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When Dante Costa hangs up his boots his story will be told that here is a player that got better as he got older. And at age 35 he put in some terrific displays for his club Nice, to be ranked as the 4th best defender in Ligue 1.

Dante Costa also known as simply Dante joined Nice from Bundesliga side VFL Wolfsburg in 2016, and has now made 96 appearances for the French club. His big break in football didn’t come until his late 20s and since then Dante Costa has not looked back.

His worst point of his career was perhaps when he was picked for Brazil to play in the semi-final of the World Cup against Germany in 2014, as a defender it couldn’t have got any worse when Brazil were infamously beaten 7-1 by the Germans who went onto win that years competition.

This season under the guidance of coach Patrick Vieira who himself this was his first term with Nice, Dante seemed calm, collective and full of confidence in the back four. This was recognised by Vieira who was only too happy to regularly pick the Brazilian for the side. In all Dante played 36 games from 38 and earned a total of 64 points just six points shy of 3rd place.

Dante of course is not expected to score goals or be in the build up to one but he still managed 1 goal and also had one assist. One question mark about him was his aggressiveness which led to 11 yellow cards for the season, though he managed not to get sent off in the league.

With Nice starting poorly in the league this affected Dante and he went the opening 3 games without scoring a point, indeed because of the goals conceded he was down by -3 points. It took sometime for Nice to group together and start believing in themselves and when the team started to gel together it was November and this is when Dante experienced the best period of his season.

He scored points in 6 consecutive games earning a massive 28 points as Nice went on a great run starting at Bordeaux and ending with a 0-0 result against Angers in December.

Dante Costa’s best game where he earned the most points was against Montpellier in April where Nice only won 1-0. But it was an all round game from the Brazilian who scored a goal, the only one for his season and also kept a clean sheet to earn 9 points.

The last match of the season was the local derby in which Nice beat Monaco 2-0 which earned Dante another 5 points. Indeed the defender had a decent consistent season overall if not spectacular, but for his age and being coached by a new manager this was an impressive display over the season.

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Ligue 1: Player of the Weekend: Dante Costa

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Dante Costa earned 9pts at the weekend and is the Ligue 1 Player of the Weekend in the fantasy Ligue 1 rankings.

The Nice defender and Brazilian player also known simply as Dante has been the bedrock and guiding light in Patrick Vieira’s team and has played every game in Ligue 1 this season for Nice. In truth Dante’s career is supposed to be winding down given that he is 35 years old, but he has been raking in the points especially in the last few weeks- Nice have had 3 clean sheets in the last five games and his display this past weekend was the arguably his best of the season.

At the weekend Nice played Montpellier and this was given extra hype given the teams standings in the league, it was 7th v 8th, and both teams still have  a chance to qualify for next seasons Europa League.

Nice at home were installed as the slight favourites and the match lived up to what was seen beforehand as a close battle. In the end Nice won 1-0, Dante kept a clean sheet and the extra massive bonus for Dante which ended up giving him 9pts for the weekend is that he scored the only goal of the game- the winning goal in the 20th minute after a superb assist from Wylan Cyprien. Not only had Dante greatly contributed to the 3 points he had also scored his first goal of the season.

In all competitions Dante has only scored 3 goals for Nice from 112 games so at the weekend he celebrated the goal as if Nice had won Ligue 1 themselves. But in truth there was still a long way to go and he defended well, led the back line superbly with his experience of playing most of his career in the German Bundesliga and richly deserves to be named as Ligue 1 player of the week.

Patrick Vieira the Nice coach was all praise for his team especially the way his players were organised and focused, he said: “We were able to take control. We created real opportunities, we could have scored more this evening. I saw a very attractive Nice team. I may have changed systems slightly too early, which made us sit back. But the important thing was the spirit we showed over the 90 minutes. The important thing is to continue our run. If you look at our game against Dijon and the one this evening, we showed defensive solidity and we created chances. It’s encouraging for what’s to come. Not everything was perfect but to win against a good Montpellier side is a good thing. We need to continue to work to keep this dynamic.”

Dante will have to keep up his good defensive displays and he might be worth adding to your team given that Nice have the motivation to keep moving up the table and try out for a European spot. Dante has 50pts overall and is 7th in the defender Ligue 1 rankings for fantasy Ligue 1. He can be bought for just 6.5m and is worth keeping on your radar.

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