Copa America

Copa America is one of the most competitive soccer competitions in the world. A Portuguese and Spanish translation of the name America Cup, Copa America is a national team tournament of members of South American Football Confederation; CONMEBOL, the South America soccer governing body. CONMEBOL is a short of Potruguese Confederação Sul-Americana de Futebol and Spanish Confederación Sudamericana de Fútbol translation for South American Football Confederation. CONMEBOL is the oldest continental confederation in the world that was started on the 9^th of July, 1916 and it’s headquartered in Luque in Paraguay. There have been 42 editions of Copa America, since it first started in 1916.

The current Copa America has 12 teams and the competition takes about a month. Since CONMEBOL is made up of 10 teams, 2 teams from other confederation are invited since 1993. Mexico has been invited seven times, USA and Costa Rica 3 times each, while Japan and Honduras has been invited only once. Canada was invited in the year 2001 but withdrew.

CONMEBOL members are Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay and Venezuela

 From 1916, Copa America was known as South American Championship of National Teams (Campeonato Sudamericano de Selecciones) and it was not until 1967 when Copa America was played for the last time as South American Championship. For 8 years, no Copa America tournament was played, resuming in 1975, officially under the name Copa America. However the tournament had no fixed venue and the matches were played all the year round in each of the countries in a home and away mode. By then, only nine teams participated and this was in group stages. The only exempt from this group competition was the defending champion who started participating in the semis and the finals were played in every four years.  This system went on from 1975 to 1987, when the Copa America was played in Argentina for the first time since the name change in a fixed location.

Out of the 10 nations, seven national football teams from the respective members have won the titles. Uruguay and Argentina have each won the title 14times, Brazil have won the Copa America title 8 times, while Peru and Paraguay have won the title twice each with Bolivia and Columbia won once each. National football teams yet to win the title are Chile, Ecuador and Venezuela.

The current Copa America Champion is Brazil, who won the title on the 15th of July 2007, in a final match played at the Estadio José Pachencho Romero in Maracaibo, Venezuela. Brazil National Team won Copa America Cup after beating Argentina by 3 goals to nil. The goals were scored by Julio Baptista in the 4th minute, Roberto Ayala of Argentina scored an own goal at the 40th minute and finally Daniel Alves scored the final goal of the 2007 Copa America tournament on the 69th minute, sealing the fate of the Argentina National Football team  in Copa America, Venezuela 2007.