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CONMEBOL, CONCACAF presidents open to future joint tournaments

Photo by Kelley L Cox/USA Today Sports
Photo by Kelley L Cox/USA Today Sports

NEW YORK — The Copa America Centenario might only be the start of joint-competitions between CONMEBOL and CONCACAF teams.

CONMEBOL president Alejandro Dominguez and CONCACAF president Victor Montagliani both stated during a press conference in Manhattan on Friday that they are not opposed to having future tournaments that would include nations from both confederations. Such competitions would likely be different from the Copa America that CONMEBOL hosts in South America every four years, and that the U.S. held this year as a one-off to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the competition.

“We are open and will continue to be open to hearing all proposals and ideas,” said Dominguez. “(We) want to grow soccer, so we’ll be open to all ideas.”

Added Montagliani: “Obviously from a CONCACAF perspective, we’re open to discussions as we move forward, but it’s not something that we’ve been able to really have time to sit down and talk in any concrete type of way.”

One of the biggest challenges is that FIFA would have to add any future tournament to its already-packed international calendar so as to force clubs to release players. U.S. Soccer president Sunil Gulati, who was also part of the press conference in the Big Apple, said that without that “it’s almost impossible” to have another competition.

Nonetheless, Gulati likes the idea of having a competition that includes teams from both confederations.

“From a U.S. perspective, obviously there’s two elements,” said Gulati. “One is participating in Copa America and two is hosting it. We’re open to all of it.”

Future tournaments are not the only innovative idea that the confederations are open to. Dominguez revealed on Friday that a request has been made to UEFA to have a match between the winners of this summer’s Copa America Centenario and the European Championship currently being played in France.

“We are now waiting for their official response,” said Dominguez.

Argentina and Chile will play in the Copa America Centenario final this Sunday at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey.

Comments

  1. Regardless of who’s hosting it and where, at the end of the day I do agree it does the USA a lot more good to be playing the likes of Argentina, Colombia, Ecuadar, etc, than it does playing CONCACAF. Yeah, yeah, we got slapped around by Argentina…that current Argentina squad would embarass a lot of teams right now, especially a USA team that’s still transitioning between generations and was short three starters to boot.

    You wanna get better, play people like that all the time.

    The reason I would include Asia is for interest. Add in the Pacific Rim and you’d probably have to play a lot more West Coast for TV reasons, but you take the best from three continents – actually four, if you regard Austalia/New Zealand as their own continent – and you’ve got an entirely different kind of event.

    As for the reason Asia would be interested, I think Japan/South Korea/Australia would be interested for the same reason CONCACAF is interested in playing CONMEBOL more. Better level, better teams, much more fan interest. And oh, yeah, a ton more money.

    Logistics alone may dictate this thing be held in the USA, though. Nobody else has our stadia, our travel and lodging infrastructure. The next time around I’d like to see them do a much better job of pricing and filling stadiums and creating more of an “event” environment, but do that and you’re probably averaging 60K per stadium instead of 40K, even for the lesser-billed matchups. Would I go see, say, Jamaica-Uruguay if it’s being played in Charlotte or Atlanta – I live right in between – and I can get in for $35 or so? Heck yeah. And so would a lot of other people. Especially if the ticket prices are reasonable you’d start seeing travel agencies putting together packages visiting fans could afford, and you’d probably start with travelling retinues of 15K or 20K to begin with. Be a very cool deal if you could get the Caribbean islanders here in big numbers to support the teams.

    We may never get a World Cup in the USA again in my lifetime, but if we’re doing something like this here every four years, does it really matter?

    Reply
    • I agree with making it affordable. However, I know that FIFA will not like the idea of including Asia because they do not want to dilute the World Cup. That is the “crown jewel” so to speak. I do not think they want any cross hemisphere tournaments taking away from the World Cup.

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      • What Asian sides would add anything anyway? Outside of Japan, South Korea and Australia, every other AFC would be embarrassed at this tournament. We don’t need a bunch of Argentina-New Zealand games or Chile-Bahrain. Snoozers.

  2. My idea would be our own 24-team tournament…with ticket prices fixed and appropriate venues selected so every match was played in front of a packed house. Stop gouging the customer; make it huge thing, and put butts in seats like the Euros do.

    To fill up the 24 I’d certainly add some teams from Asia – particularly Japan, South Korea, and Australia, China if they had a team worth a durn. Might also add New Zealand. Also make sure teams like Canada get a bid even if you have to do so by letting them co-host. No idea what you’d call it aside from “everybody else’s Not Euros”. But especially with the Asian counties involved you’d have viewership from across the Americas and the Pacific Rim and that’s a very, very big deal, and certainly on a par with the Euros.

    Certainly would fill that eternal gap between World Cups.

    Reply
    • Asia already has its own tournament so I’m not sure I see the point of that. Plus, as we’ve seen from the Euros, a 24 team tournament where 16 go through to the knockout stage makes for turgid dull soccer.

      I like the idea that was rumored a few weeks ago – a 16 team combined Copa America which replaces the Gold Cup and South America only Copa held every four years. Instead of always having it in the US, as rumored, I think it should be moved around. There are plenty of countries in the Americas capable of hosting it. As far as Confederations Cup places, you just give a place to the team from each continent which goes furthest. So in this instance, it would be the winner of the final representing Conmebol and the US representing concacaf.

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      • You are correct. Scrap the Gold Cup. Simply continue with the Copa America every 4 years and keep it at sixteen teams but rotate it to different countries. USA should not host every time. The best bet is to have this tournament the year after each World Cup.

    • Wow. Talk about superfluous and unnecessary. Asia already has an incredibly successful Asian Cup, so why do that? Easy solution is to just have all COMNEBOL teams participate and then have the CONCACAF WC qualifiers double up as Copa America qualifiers where only the teams that qualified for the Hex qualify for the Copa America. That’s 16 teams right there and it would be a solid tournament.

      Reply

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