We’ve had a summer feat of football for consumption this year, with Euro 2024 having wrapped up with a Spain victory (It’s still to early to talk about it!).
Whilst at the same time the oldest international football tournament was also taking place, CONMEBOL Copa America which took place in soon to be world cup hosts the United States.
The biggest football party of the summer almost became a tragedy, with dodgy pitches,
punch ups and supporters invading stadiums, this years Copa America from the outside looked like organised chaos.
The tournament held at 14 NFL stadiums with six of them having grass pitches installed over artificial turf, allegedly some laid out just days before the tournament began.
Marcelo Bielsa called organisers “a plague of liars” that even the training pitches let along stadium pitches were a disaster.
We also had the unusual element of referees being miked up which is something we’ve long been a proponent of on this channel however it just seemed show the utter incompetence of some referees, with the Chilean federation calling for referee Wilmar Roldan to be sanctioned for his conduct during their final group game.
Now you might be thinking if the tournament was held in the US, their governing body should be held responsible for the crap-fest, maybe take the world cup away from them in two years, however I would implore you to hold your horses on that one, because whilst the tournament was held in the United States the US federation had very little to do with the organization as that fell on the South American confederation CONMEBOL who reportedly paid US Soccer around $10 million to sanction the event. It’s all a matter greed with CONMEBOL wanting to keep more of the money than they did for the previous Copa America hosted in the United States in 2016.
Let’s one of the more unsavoury moments during the tournament which was the brawl in Charlotte during the Semi-Final between Columbia and Uruguay.
After Uruguay lost the match, their players seem to have entered the stands and fought with Columbian supporters, now it is alleged that Columbian supporters had been harassing the Uruguayan players families and guests during the match. CONMEBOL has launched an investigation into the matter.
The final didn’t go off without incident either, with video surfacing of supporters climbing through air events to gain access to Miami’s Hard Rock stadium, I should point out the horror show that was the Euro 2021 final at Wembley but these years Euro’s seem to go off without incident.
So what can FIFA learn from the Copa America, well basically do the opposite of what CONMEBOL did, FIFA organize the world cup themselves and will surely make sure that stadiums and training facilities are up to the standard required for the biggest sporting event on the planet.
And hey we didn’t mention how overpriced the tickets were for this tournament.
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