The bad old days of the Copa Libertadores

The Copa Libertadores, South America’s top continental club football tournament, is the region’s equivalent to Europe’s Champions League. And the competitions are starting to look alike, with the continent’s best teams battling it out in a globally broadcast prestigious tournament, with big-name sponsors, millions in prize money, and a big shiny trophy given out to the winner.

But the Copa Libertadores wasn’t always this polished. For decades, the Copa Libertadores was an unprofitable logistical nightmare, with its history peppered with violence, boycotts, and match-fixing — but with plenty of exciting football for good measure.

If today’s fans complain about the hassle of traveling to Copa Libertadores away matches, or the neutral final venue, imagine the struggle for a Uruguayan side in the 1960s having to travel more than 5,000 kilometers as the crow flies to Venezuela for a group stage match, while commercial flights in the region were largely reserved for the truly wealthy.

“We are also talking about a period when football was poorly broadcasted. In addition to aviation, television itself was only starting to become popular. Today, everybody can easily watch a Copa Libertadores game. It was very different at the time, which helps to explain why the competition did not captivate people as much as it does today,” says Luciano Wernicke, a Buenos Aires-based football expert and author of several books on the subject. 

Fans and players had a very different relation with football as well, in an age when the continent’s best talent would stay in South America during the peak of their careers...