Explaining Diego Costa's Powerful Rise in Spain This Season

Juventus striker Fernando Llorente told AS this week, while on international duty with Spain, that, given the choice Diego Costa faced recently, his decision over international representation would have been slightly different, via Sky Sports:

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Had I been in the same position [as Costa], I would have chosen to represent the country of my birth, but everyone is entitled to do whatever they want to do.

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Cynics might say Llorente, who has managed just seven goals in 24 La Roja caps, fears the Atletico Madrid striker’s conversion reduces his chances of going to Brazil for next summer’s World Cup.

Given Costa’s remarkable form this season, they’d be right.

“The sky is the limit for Diego Costa,” purred Atleti boss Diego Simeone earlier this season (h/t Goal.com), while adoring comments poured in from Barcelona’s finest too.

Andres Iniesta told Cadena Ser “[Costa’s] shown almost unbeatable performance levels.” And Dani Alves told reporters “[Costa] would also be an important player for Brazil—he’s not scored so many goals for nothing” (h/t ESPN).

Few expected the 25-year-old to have quite the impact this season.

Radamel Falcao left in the summer and, with him, so did 34 goals—how were Atleti supposed to replace them?

The answer looked like it was going to come in the form of David Villa, and it has, in a way, but not in the direct way speculated.

Villa is a very different forward to Falcao, more adept at dropping deep, drifting wide and generally getting involved in the team’s all round play—with Falcao in the side the worry was if he didn’t score, who would?

Los Rojiblancos look much freer as an attacking force this season as a result, and it has allowed Diego Costa to step up.

That's not to say he hasn’t been slowly improving since his loan spell with Rayo Vallecano at the back-end of the 2011/12 season.

Ten goals arrived in 16 La Liga appearances in Vallecas, and he returned to Atleti the following season to slowly improve as the season progressed.

Supplementing Falcao’s 34 goals, the Brazilian-born-Spaniard chipped in with 20 goals last season—with eight coming in Atletico’s triumphant Copa del Rey campaign and 13 coming after the winter break.

He also demonstrated a penchant for creating too—directly assisting seven goals and over laying on over 30 chances—which is a trait which has not only carried into the new season, but makes him the perfect focal point of a Simeone side no longer reliant on a Colombian No. 9.

The talent had always been there—Liverpool failed with a bid in the summer according to the BBC—but perhaps it’s taken so long to become so evidently obvious because of the bad-natured side of his game.

“On the pitch I fought with everyone, I couldn’t control myself,” Costa once said, via football-espana.net. “I insulted everyone, I had no respect for the opposition, I thought I had to kill them.”

He was referring to his upbringing in Brazil, but it’s a mentality which followed him to Europe.

As recently as last season he was accused of racism by Geoffrey Kondogbia, sent off for pushing a Rubin Kazan player over and got embroiled in a nasty, physical battle with Sergio Ramos and Pepe in the Madrid derby.

Writing in The Guardian Sid Lowe suggested that if Costa took his work home with him “he might goad the dog with a stick, surreptitiously elbow his wife out the way, shrug his shoulders as she lay in a crumpled heap and whisper insults to his children.”

That was last season though, and there’s a hope that his new role as talisman will breed responsibility—he’s been fairly scandal free this season.

He’ll still dive—he plays in Spain after all—and he’ll still get caught up in arguments, but maybe, just maybe, it seems that he’s left the really nasty stuff in his past: three yellow cards in 17 appearances this season, compared to the 15 cautions and one dismissal he picked up last season, suggest a start.

Meanwhile it’s his 16 goals which have made the headlines and got the football world talking.

Costa had been on a slow ascent for about 18 months, but this season has seen that ascent translate into an almost vertical line.

The main benefactor of Falcao’s departure and a new, more fluid system at the Vicente Calderon, Costa, and his goals, will help Atletico stay in the title race until the final weekend of the season when they travel to Barcelona’s Camp Nou.