Copa America 2019: Host Country, Venues And Teams

  The South American Football Championship was found in 1916, which later on in 1975 came to be known as ‘Copa America’. It is an international men’s football competition played between national teams from CONMEBOL, the South American governing body of soccer. It is the first and oldest global inland football tournament. Copa America concludes the continental winner of South America.

Copa America turned 100 in 2016 and the U.S hosted the 30-day soccer party. 2 years back, at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, the beginning of Copa America Centenario was marked. It was the 45^th edition of the soccer tournament. It became the first tournament to have a host outside of South America. The U.S hosted the Copa America Centenario in which Chile held the title while Argentina, Colombia and United States were runner-ups, respectively.

In 2019, the 46^th edition of the Copa America will be held in Brazil. The champion of the game will receive the right to participate in the 2021 FIFA Confederations Cup. Chile is the consecutive defending champion and has won the last two editions of the soccer tournament.

Copa America 2019: Host country

Brazil is hosting the Copa America. Chile was originally decided to be the host of the 2019 Copa America. However, Brazil was in line to host the 2015 Copa America according to CONMEBOL’s alphabetical order rotation policy. In 2012, Brazil and Chile’s Football Federations declared the swapping of the order of hosting the 2015 and 2019 championships. It was also approved by CONMEBOL.

2019 is going to be the last odd year in which Copa America will be held. From 2020 onwards, Copa America will be played in the even years as such other tournaments.

Copa America 2019: Venues

Fernando Sarney (Vice President of CBF), on 14 June 2018, declared five cities to host the tournament which are Salvador, Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo, Belo Horizonte, and Porto Alegre. The first match will be played at the Estadio do Morumbi in Sao Paulo. The semi-finals will be played at the Arena do Gremio in Porto Alegre and Estadio Mineirao in Belo Horizonte. The final will be played at the Estadio do Maracana in Rio de Janeiro.

On 23 November 2018, CONMEBOL declared that the second Sao Paulo venue would be altered from the Allianz Parque to Arena Corinthians.

Copa America 2019: Teams

All the 10 national teams of CONMEBOL are qualified to enter the tournament. Apart from the CONMEBOL national teams, CONMEBOL initially planned to organize a 16-team tournament. CONMEBOL confirmed three teams from CONCACAF and three teams from Asian Football Confederation (AFC) on 16^th March 2018. On 4^th May 2018, CONMEBOL announced that instead of 16 teams, 12 teams would be taking part in the tournament. The tournament will be played between 10 national teams of CONMEBOL and with 2 guest teams being Qatar (AFC) and Japan (AFC).

Here is the list of the teams which are going to play in the tournament –

1. Argentina
2. Bolivia
3. Brazil (hosts)
4. Chile (title holders)
5. Colombia
6. Ecuador
7. Japan (invited team)
8. Paraguay
9. Peru
10. Qatar
11. Uruguay
12. Venezuela