South America’s premiere international football tournament, the Copa America, kicks off this evening when Brazil face Venezuela in Brasília. From whatever angle you look at it, the competition is a monument to futility.
For starters, this particular edition of Copa America should not even have taken place. Held every four years, we have had tournaments in 2015 and 2019, with an extra “centenary” edition shoehorned in in 2016 — held in the U.S., of all places. South America’s football governing body Conmebol then decided to switch the Copa America from odd to even years, but instead of keeping its powder dry until the 2024 competition to be held in Ecuador, it scheduled a “transition” tournament for 2020, to be hosted jointly by Argentina and Colombia — two countries on opposite ends of the continent.
The stoppage of football in 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic gave Conmebol the perfect opportunity to cancel this edition of the Copa America, but contractual commitments spoke louder and the tournament was postponed until this year.
Then, with...
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