It is not unusual for the Copa América to include “guest teams” from other regions. But for 2024, the participating Concacaf teams will not qualify by invitation, but rather through the 2023-24 Concacaf Nations League. No invited team has won the Copa América, although Mexico reached the final in 1993 and 2001. The United States has participated in the tournament four times, and on a couple of occasions managed to reach the semifinals.
The federations assured that the extended edition of the Copa América will serve, in part, as an indispensable window of high-level preparation in the Western Hemisphere before the 2026 World Cup, which will be organized jointly in the United States, Mexico and Canada.
The tournament will be played between mid-June and mid-July 2024, meaning it will coincide with that summer’s Euro Cup, a highly anticipated event on the football calendar that happens every four years, but those dates keep both tournaments at bay. a good distance from the Olympic Games in Paris, which open at the end of July 2024.
Argentina won the most recent Copa América, in 2021, a milestone in Messi’s career and his first major title at national team level. To that triumph, Messi and Argentina added the victory in the World Cup in 2022. Argentina and Uruguay have won a total of 15 editions of the Copa América each and Brazil, nine.
The federations also announced that the 2024 Concacaf Women’s Gold Cup will feature the top four South American teams and eight Concacaf teams, a novel (and welcome) increase in the tournament’s level of competition for the region’s top teams, in addition to of the Women’s World Cup or the Olympic Games.
A new men’s club soccer competition for the region is also being considered, involving two club teams from each confederation. The federations said they hoped to launch that tournament in 2024 as well. The tournament comes as the Club World Cup, for clubs from leagues around the world, is in flux, and FIFA plans to expand it, but host it with less frequency.
The club tournament is another proof of the closer relationship between the organizations in the region and of Conmebol’s willingness to seek new horizons for its teams. Conmebol already has a relationship with UEFA, the governing body of European soccer, thanks to the relaunch of an intercontinental tournament that pits the winning team of the Copa América against the European champion team. Argentina defeated Italy 3-0 in last year’s edition, the first time it has been held since 1993.