When Rob Holding walked at Wembley for the 2017 FA Cup final, the Arsenal defender was just 21 years old and was tasked with taking on one of European football’s trickiest customers in Diego Costa.
Holding had arrived at Arsenal at the start of that season when he joined from Bolton Wanderers in a £2million move and quickly established himself in the Gunners’ first-team squad and earned the praise of his boss Arsene Wenger.
Coming at the end of Holding’s first season with the Gunners, the Wembley final against Chelsea presented a fresh challenge for the young centre-back.
Rob Holding on going up against Diego Costa
For the previous two seasons, Costa had established himself as one of the Premier League’s best - and most fiery - strikers, who was as adept at unsettling defenders as he was at scoring goals.
Wenger gave Holding the nod in a three-man Arsenal defence alongside the more experienced duo of Nacho Monreal and skipper Per Mertesacker.
But far from being the weak link in the backline, Holding gave as good as he got.
“I knew what Costa was like,” the former England U21 star tells FourFourTwo. “He wanted to throw you off your game.”
Costa quickly attempted to do just that. “At one point he jumped on the floor and pulled me down with him, and then kicked out.”
There was plenty more to come, including one of the more iconic images from Arsenal’s 2-1 victory, which came courtesy of an Aaron Ramsey winner, which came shortly after Costa had cancelled out Alexis Sanchez’s early opener.
“Obviously, there is the famous image of me pointing at my head saying, ‘You’re a nutter, you’re crazy’,” Holding recalls.
“But then I just got back into my position. There was actually a nice little moment towards the end of the game where I blocked one of his shots and he tapped me on the chest.
“I think that was a little bit of respect, which was cool. He was a great goalscorer, but just a bit of an agitator.
“It was phenomenal lifting the FA Cup.”
