I know its not gonna happen, but my plea regarding the format for next year's tournament is that when a 1st-place team plays a 4th-place team in the QFs, there should be no PKs. If its tied after 90 minutes the group winner advances to the semis. Otherwise there is no real advantage to finishing 1st versus finishing 4th in your group. The group stage, which is endless (5 games), will just be about finishing above Qatar and Bolivia.
That's a great idea actually. It makes the game more interesting for one, since there's no reward for parking the bus and getting a draw to go to pks, and it's arguably even fairer. Penalties are a lottery, anyway, that hardly show the true merits of a team. At least group records are an actual performance metric, even if they're not tied to the particular game in question.
FWIW, Liga MX had their playoffs set up that way...then added away goals. The application here isn't exact, obviously (home-and-away vs. one-offs), but a possible, unintentional consequence is encouraging the higher seeds to sit on their 0-0 "lead". What I would suggest, rather, is (depending on if we'll have quarterfinals and semifinals in both countries) let the #1 and #2 seeds stay where they are, and obligate #3 and #4 to have to travel. That is... Colombia bracket N1 vs. S4 N2 vs. S3 Argentina bracket S1 vs. N4 S2 vs. N3
@Paul Calixte very likely how the 2020 CA knockout fixtures will be. Let worse qualified teams get sick from temperature changes, by traveling earlier in the tournament between ARG + COL (16 Celsius differential between Buenos Aires and Medellin, at this moment).
To be fair in Sao Paulo it was about 30 Celcius for Chile yesterday and it is expected to be 15 Celcius in Porto Alegre on Wednesday for their Semis. So extreme weather can be a factor in one country as host too you know.
Yeah, I saw Porto Alegre fans wearing winter clothes during the last match. No wonder some athletes picked up respiratory problems after playing in that venue.
Just in case it has not been mentioned here before (too lazy to check): Conmebol has officially confirmed that: 1) Colombia will host the Final 2) Argentina will host (and presumably play in) the opener, and 3) Each host will get 2 QFs and a SF.
I was going to say probably when the rest of the draw is done but realised that they have already done that. Where ever we end up it will be challenging, but hopefully we can win our first competitive match on South American soil (or even get our first draw).
If the interest in tickets reported here is anything to go by, CONMEBOL might regret going head-to-head with EuroCup from 2020 onwards. https://www.uefa.com/uefaeuro-2020/news/newsid=2616635.html
They will probably lose TV viewers to the EuroCup games; at the moment the Copa has a unique slot in the calendar.
The 2016 Copa America Centenario overlapped with Euro 2016 and the ratings were really good for the most part. IT was also the highest attended Copa of all time. You have to also remember that match times will not conflict much due to different time zones so I don't think there will be much drop off in numbers.
I see; it will be interesting to see whether that situation is replicated next summer. Correct me if I'm wrong, but kick-off times are usually earlier in the day in South America compared to Europe. For example, at WC2014 no games were played during the evening.
The World Cup is different than Copa America. Most Copa America matches (if not all) will be scheduled to be played after the Euro matches are done. I don't remember too many conflicts in 2016. And for another point of reference this year there were maybe one or two matches that conflicted the the Women's World Cup times in France.
There is also the audience outside the Americas to think about: I expect they will generally prefer to watch the EuroCup than the Copa America,
I would've seriously contemplated travelling to Colombia if not for the Euros happening at the same time. The added incentive to visit St. Petersburg, Copenhagen and Amsterdam was too much to resist.
Except they wouldn't have to choose, as long as Conmebol doesn't schedule any game before 5pm (US Eastern).