2016 Copa América Centenario: Confirmed & Added to FIFA Calendar [R]

With Chile hosting the 2015 edition one has to wonder whether this supposed 'Centenario' tournament (a case of 'I'll believe it when I see it') will be considered a legit Copa America tournament with the actual trophy at stake. I'm guessing it won't be. If it is, which champion will represent at the 2017 Confederations Cup, the one from 2015 or 2016?
I also can't see the likes of Brazil, Argentina et al sending their strongest squads to three tournaments in consecutive years - 2014 World Cup, 2015 Copa America, 2016 Copa America Centenario. Throw in the 2017 Confederations Cup, the 2018 World Cup and the 2019 Copa America and there's the possibility of a country or two playing in tournaments for six consecutive June/Julys!

 

I can see them bringing the Copa America to the US. More money here, but I don't like the idea and I hope it's false.

 

I'd love to see the Copa America here in the states!!!!

I only wish I could vote on it. Since it's called centenario put it in Uruguay and have the majority of games played at stadio centenario.

 

Wow, I never heard of this. Is there any real chance it can happen? What about Chile 2015? Would it make sense to have 2 Copas Americas in a row?

 

I love the idea and this has been talked about in almost all the futbol talk shows around. This will happen and trust me the countries will send their best teams there. As to who will participate in confederation cup that might have to be worked out still. But it doesnt matter is a great way to celebrate 100yrs.

As for the two copa americas in a row so what, this tournament used to be celebrated every year than every two and now every four. Is a special occasion under special circumstances, would make for a great tournament. And yes it will be a legit copa america with an actual trophy at stake, and probably a special trophy to commemorate the 100yrs,


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If it came here to the US it would be the best CA. US is still fertile ground in many aspects to expand. It would take out the fun for Chile.

 

Well there's still the matter of whether or not FIFA will be willing to put the tournament on their calendar freeing teams to request players from their clubs during the window. FIFA can still blow this thing up.

 

This is 100% going to happen its been planned for a while. I for one think its going to be a magnificent competition. and knowing how much FIFA loves anniversaries, im sure they'd release thier players.
its really the first time that ConCacaf have the opportunity to assert them selves in thier own hemisphere, and on home turf. It should be very interesting.
I wish Africa/Uefa/Asia would think about doing something like this one day, I know Africa and Asia used to do something kind of Similar, but CAF ended it when they the AFC supported Germany over SA for the 2006 world cup.

 

Yes we in CONCACAF know how long CONMEBOL's been planning this thing, but the only thing that can be predicted is that FIFA will act in their own interests. This thing will be profitable if it goes forward, of that I have no doubt. But don't count on FIFA to keep their collective heads out of their own asses long enough to make it happen. It's still not official until FIFA puts it on it's calendar.

 

Well it's still not official but President Webb said he's hoping for an announcement within a few weeks. Fantastic news!

It starts around the 8:30 mark

http://nasn.tv/2013/concacaf-president-jeffrey-webb-on-the-best-soccer-show/

 

Not a huge fan of this proposed competition, especially if it's supposed to become a regular occurrence. If CONMEBOL and CONCACAF want to closely work together then they should merge. Full stop.

 

So what about a one-off tournament makes you think it will be a regular thing?

Also, please explain your objections to it.. from a US perspective, I see no downside. The fans here get to see a slew of awesome games, and the NT gets to be in a tournament with higher than normal competition. What is the downside that I am missing?

 

I don't mind if it's a one off and the 2015 Copa America champion is the one playing in the 2017 Confederations Cup.
If it is a one off celebrating the tournament's centenary then I feel a separate trophy should be up for grabs. Quite unfair for the 2015 winner to hold it for only one year (assuming they don't win this proposed 2016 thing).
And I'll stick to what I said in my first post in this thread regarding the squads teams would send...

 

Well, the calendar is crowded enough without this centenary for one. Furthermore I am getting increasingly annoyed with Mexico and now the US trying to secure themselves the highest level of competition in South America's flagship event without facing that very same competition in World Cup qualifying. Of course CONMEBOL's greed acts as the great facilitator here. Add in Mexican participation in the Libertadores and the lines between the two confederations are getting a bit too blurry for my liking.

Either do it right (complete merger) or go back to truly separate entities.

 

It's probably the Caribbean and Central American federations that would have the most to lose from a CONCACAF-CONMEBOL merger, not the US and Mexico. Given 8 qualifying spots for a combined CONMEBOL/CONCACAF qualifier, the US and Mexico would not be guaranteed of qualifying for the World Cup, but they would probably still qualify fairly often, so they would have a tradeoff of qualifying less often for the World Cup and not hosting as many major confederation tournaments while gaining the benefit of prestige and international notoriety and improved competition. On the other hand, second tier CONCACAF teams like Costa Rica and Honduras and Trinidad & Tobago would struggle in a combined confederation and would not get to claim all the benefits that the US and Mexico would. On top of that, a bunch of the weaker Central American and Caribbean countries would get far fewer high profile matches because they would struggle to qualify for the final stages of a joint Copa America, whereas they get consistent representation in the Gold Cup right now. The Caribbean teams make up a large majority of the federations in CONCACAF, so they have more than enough votes to block a merger. While it's a fair bet that the US and Mexico are happy with their current situation and don't want it to change, I doubt they would form the backbone of resistance against a confederation merger if it were to come up for consideration.

 

Its worth the risk. I do not think it would be as grand if it was held in Argentina, Brazil or Uruguay for infrastructure structure reasons. US has it all and is half a century ahead from the best stadiums in SA.

On the little Concacaf island nations...their should be qualifications for them to get 1 berth in the CA100.


I do and don't see a merger happening. I think the merger will depend on the success of the CA100. Why I don't see it the merger, just plain ego and stupidity. I already see it as Conmebols fault.

 

Why does it bother you? It would be nice if you would elaborate on why you think it's wrong.

Merging Confederations isn't entirely up to the US or Mexico, otherwise Mexico would have left long ago. Add in the fact that CONMEBOL would likely require certain assurances in the event of a full merger to prevent the smaller CONCACAF nations from running the thing the way that they run things here. Then FIFA would have to sign off on the thing. It's possible that such a tournament is the first step on the path to a potential full merger a hundred years from now but I'm not that clairvoyant. All I know is that there's a million things that prevent it from happening anytime soon.

But we have the resource of proximity to CONMEBOL and we have financial resources that they can use. It makes sense for us to take advantage of this. If Africa or Asia had a similar opportunity they would no doubt take advantage. The difference is that CONMEBOL's small membership makes this a possibility where it would not be for say UEFA.

At any rate this tournament, nor any other that the confederations might organize in the future, aren't the business of outside confederations. The federations wouldn't be doing their job if they weren't trying to find ways to improve. And short of moving federations (which isn't up to us) it's the next best thing. This shouldn't concern anyone except the clubs that employ the players who would take part. If it doesn't bother CONMEBOL then why should it bother you? Let's not forget that CONMEBOL came to us with this.

 

I'd love for that to happen, but frankly it's not going to happen. As a fan of a CONCACAF team we don't get to play quality competition very often so I wont complain

 

Since the Copa America is next in 2015, is there not a way for it to just be post-poned so that the 2016 CA is the next tournament? I mean would make way more sense than having the centennial tournament a year after and not allowed to bring players from their European based clubs.

 

As long as you offer them an improved annual payout the vast majority of the CFU associations would be on board with a merger. Remember, World Cup qualifying or even playing the Gold Cup is hardly something that exists in their world. Most of them struggle to pay basic expenses to keep the infrastructure going. It's not unusual to see these national teams go for several months without playing a match due to the costs involved. Take Antigua and Barbuda for example, they have yet to play a single match this year.

I disagree. Next to the clubs it is certainly FIFA's business and it will be interesting to see their ruling on player release. Let me give you a more dramatic example. What if UEFA would start inviting A-Teams from Brazil and Argentina to the European Championship, a move that would put the tournament on nearly equal footing with the World Cup in terms of quality and exposure. Wouldn't that bother you? What separates football from other sports are the clear organizational structures and I increasingly see lines getting blurry. I am not against change and re-organization, but it has to be done in a comprehensive and concise manner, not cherry-picking when convenient.

 

That right there is why the US and Mexico will never agree to a merge. I can easily see 8 Conmebol teams qualifying for most WCs ahead of Mexico and the US. They struggle vs Panama and Costa Ricas of the world imagine going vs Paraguay, Colombia, Venezuela, Boliva in La Paz, let alone brasil, uruguay, argentina, chile and ecuador.

And Fifa will be a lot more against it since they rather have the US and Mexico markets in every world cup. They dont want to run the risk of losing out those two markets of more than 200million viewers in any of the WCs.





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What you are suggestiong is that:

1. CONCACAF and CONMEBOL would merge.
2. They would pare down from 3 full 12-team confederation tournament finals per cycle down to a single 16-team confederation tournament final per cycle.
3. The CFU will see its entrants into the regional tournament reduced from four down to one or two on average.
4. CFU federations would almost never qualify for a World Cup from that point on, because there will always be some combination of at least 8 South American, Central American, and North American teams that are far superior, thus harming both the financial and prestige interests of Jamaica, Trinidad & Tobago, Haiti, and so forth.
5. However, because of higher quality of competition in the combined CONCACAF/CONMEBOL regional tournament, this reduction in total number of regional tournaments will ultimately dramatically increase the revenues available to former CONCACAF countries without simultaneously harming CONMEBOL nations' financial interests.
6. This increase in revenues will be significant enough for countries like Antigua & Barbuda to the extent that their financial and political interests will decouple from nations like Trinidad & Tobago, Cuba, Jamaica, Haiti, and the other dominant Caribbean nations in the currently unified CFU voting bloc.
7. Officials from CFU would vote purely based on above board federation financial interests, rather than on political interests or bribery, and they would ignore the CFU vote whip. (This is something I don't remember happening in the recent history of CONCACAF.)
8. This could all be done in a way that would not also harm the financial and political interests of NAFU, UNCAF, and CONMEBOL.

While it's not impossible, it seems really unlikely to me. I don't think the politics and finances break that way at the moment.

I don't think that a European Championship + Brazil & Argentina would be even close to being on the same footing with the World Cup. It would be the European Championship plus Brazil and Argentina. The World Cup derives its unparalleled prestige out of tradition, not because the best teams of Europe and South America are there. Similarly, the Confederations Cup will never be on the same level as the World Cup even though it blurs the lines between confederations and invites a lot of the best teams. By the same token, I don't think a joint CONCACAF/CONMEBOL tournament hosted in the US will have more prestige than a South America-only Copa America. If anything, it will be less prestigious. It might have a very large viewership because of interested North American audiences, but it's not going to kill off intrigue in the World Cup, or whatever it is you're worried about.

On top of this, football has never operated along clear organizational structures. On the contrary, there is an enormous disjoint between club football and international football, countries are constantly shifting between confederations, traditions are tweaked every few World Cup cycles, and the actual rules of organizing major tournaments are determined on the fly. It's a year out from the most prestigious tournament in international football, and we still have absolutely no idea how they're going to choose the seeds. FIFA is an ad-hoc organization and always had been.

To me, it sounds more as if you're irritated that the US and Mexico would get to participate in any prestigious regional tournament at all because they play in a region that isn't prestigious. That is, you believe that the prestige of any particular national team should be derived from the prestige of the confederation it plays in, and that allowing teams to play outside their confederations subverts this paradigm by allowing them the undeserved prestige of playing against teams from superior confederations.

Of course, the reality is that Mexico's usual participation in Copa America is just an artifact of CONMEBOL needing an extra two teams to make three groups, not some conspiracy to let Mexico play above its station, and the potential 2016 Copa America in the US would be primarily a money grab for the two confederations involved, so ithe token CONCACAF participation in CONMEBOL regional tournaments is not likely to dramatically improve the prestige of CONCACAF participants. Nobody's talking about how great Mexico is because they made it to the Copa America finals back in 2001.

 

Fantastic point