Argentina follows Colombia’s lead as CONMEBOL seeks venue for Copa América

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The South American Football Confederation (CONMEBOL) is looking for a new venue for the 47th edition of Copa America before accepting the extreme fact of canceling its celebration, at least for the second consecutive year.

An emergency meeting of the Council of the South American Football Confederation has been called for Monday at its headquarters in Luque, starting at 12.00 GMT.

The covid-19 pandemic, which in March last year forced Conmebol to cancel the tournament scheduled in Argentina and Colombia between June 12 and July 12, was rescheduled for June 11, and sometime later, with the departure of Australia and Qatar, the two invited teams, it was agreed that it would start on June 13.

But today, due to the serious intensification of the cases of contagion in Argentina, Conmebol had to announce this Sunday through a brief statement published on its Twitter account that it was now analyzing proposals to move the event.

“Conmebol informs that given the present circumstances, it has decided to suspend the organization of the Copa America in Argentina,” the announcement began.

The new development comes ten days after Colombia, immersed more than a month ago in a serious social conflict, was left out of the organization when its proposal to postpone once again the tournament for the end of the year was not accepted.

And it came just hours after Argentina’s Minister of the Interior, Wado de Pedro, declared that Copa America was becoming unviable in his country. He admitted that, in his opinion, his country should have abandoned such an undertaking to protect the health of Argentines.

De Pedro had met with the Argentine president, Alberto Fernandez, and the balance of the health situation was worrying, even in the four cities chosen to host 13 of the 18 matches: Buenos Aires, Mendoza, Cordoba, and Santiago del Estero.

“We analyzed with the president the sanitary situations in the different jurisdictions. We particularly analyzed the epidemiological situation in Mendoza, Córdoba, Buenos Aires, Tucumán and Santa Fe, and some of these are Copa América venues. So far, they are venues, but from our health diagnosis, we see it as very difficult to play in Argentina,” said the minister.

The South American Football Confederation, which groups ten federations, informed in its communiqué that it “analyzes the offer of other countries that showed interest in hosting the continental tournament”.

The conjectures range from the new destination of the competition has a deck of options: Chile, Brazil, Paraguay, and even the United States.

However, Conmebol sources consulted by Efe do not rule out that the competition will finally be canceled for this year.

In all, a new venue would probably imply a new change of dates to accommodate circumstances and displacements, which would be detrimental to the development of the new local tournaments, the reactivation of the South American qualifiers for the World Cup in Qatar, the beginning of the round of 16 stages in the Libertadores and South American Cups, as well as the new season in the European leagues.