Brazil to Strip Diego Costa of Citizenship for Choosing Spain?

Brazil's soccer federation has intentions of stripping Diego Costa of his Brazilian citizenship after he elected to play for Spain internationally.

Costa has been at the center of a controversy between the two nations and finally made his final decision on Tuesday when he rejected an invite to join Brazil for friendlies this coming month. The Brazilian-born player is naturalized in Spain and has elected to play for his adopted nation; the federation has not taken this rejection well.

"It's obvious that the reason he made that choice was financial," Brazilian Football Confederation juridical director Carlos Eugenio Lopes said according to ESPN. "The chairman [Jose Maria Marin] authorized me to open a legal action at the Justice Ministry requesting that he loses his Brazilian citizenship, which Diego Costa has rejected.

Lopes then went on to attack the Spanish Federation in what is becoming an increasingly hostile situation between the two nation's organizations.

"I have no doubt that he was allured. He suffered two hours of peer pressure from the Spanish on Monday night and another two hours on Tuesday morning. Diego Costa talks about love on the letter he sent CBF, but he chose Spain in the same year he played two friendly matches for Brazil and now on the same week he has been called up for two other friendlies," Lopes added before making an argument for Costa's commitment to Brazil. "CBF was willing to fight for the player. Legally, our arguments are pretty strong because the friendlies are good enough for the FIFA ranking. Switzerland's 1-0 win over Brazil was what helped them go up to seventh and guaranteed them as head of selection for the World Cup draw. If they didn't consider the friendlies, would Switzerland have been seventh? No, that spot would've gone to Italy."

Per FIFA's rulings, a player is not locked into playing for a specific country until he has played in a competitive match. If he only plays in friendlies, then he can always change allegiances.

Lopes final statements made it clear that Costa was not important to Brazil, but his intentions were to make sure he never suited up for Spain either.

"The chairman told me that Costa has proved he's not fit to be part of the [Brazil coach Luis Felipe] Scolari family, that he would contaminate the family because he's not committed to Brazil, but to Spain," he added. "He rejected his Brazilian citizenship. Marin has asked me to study the situation deeply in order to keep him from ever playing for Spain. He told me that, from now on, Costa is 'persona non grata' at the national team and that the players themselves wouldn't welcome him because of that episode."

Lopes' hostile response is likely to ramp up the competition between Brazil and Spain at the upcoming tournament. Lopez was of no interest to Brazil until Spain expressed a desire to invite him to a series of World Cup qualifiers.

A number of other Brazilians have opted to play for their adopted nations. Deco joined Portugal while Marco Senna was a major piece of Spain's Euro 2008 championship squad.