I think Conmebol and CONCACAF should agree to scrap the gold cup and make it a true copa America. North and South America

You enter to watch a copa America video and then you find yourself getting educated about the Ecuadorian economy, thanks Alfie

In South America, the word "America" usually refers to the entire Americas, so Copa America is a suitable name for a competition that includes the USA and Mexico as well as the CONMEBOL members

Rooting hard for Colombia to win the “Copper America”

it seems like more people outside the americas have a problem with this tournament than people actually living here

I don't see any problem here, the tournament began with three countries, change is constant, it's either this or the tournament continues to decline in popularity

As someone from South America, one of the reasons I think the Euros is more appealing to a broader audience is that they have a lot of teams playing in it. Copa America is just as high quality as the Euros in my opinion, but with Conmebol only having 10 countries in total as a confederation, it feels like a much smaller tournament in comparisson. It doesn't matter how much you hype up the Confederations Cup for example, even though it was composed of the winners of the 6 continental champions around the world, it always felt less important, appealing and prestigious than winning whatever continental cup your confederation holds every 4 years instead. This is why they traditionally invite 2 non-Conmebol teams, most of the time being Concacaf teams, and I REALLY wouldn't mind if they scrapped the Gold Cup from Concacaf and instead Conmebol and Concacaf held a joint Copa America every 4 years, specially considering Concacaf has 41 member nations. It's good to remember that Concacaf was born after the North and Central american confederations joined together in 1961. It'd make it a much bigger tournament and more appealing in my opinion, and it could help level the playing field between Concacaf and Conmebol. Maybe they don't even need to scrap the Gold Cup, it can just stay as a lower-tiered competition and then there's the true Copa America.

To be fair, Mexico and the US are still in America. Qatar on the other hand...

I'm really happy with new copa format. Finally 4 groups of 4

“Like the African cup of nations hosted by Austria” I don’t think it’s the same scenario as it’s literally called “copa America” which makes sense because it’s all American countries

As an American can confirm there's nothing worse than the US ticket market. Hopefully the US Justice Dept. wins their case against Ticketmaster/Live Nation and the situation can improve

The 16 team format guarantees: 1. Every CONMEBOL nation plays at least 1 CONCACAF nation 2. No 3rd place teams advance

⁠Copa America literally translates to cup of America/America Cup. Both continents of North and South America are literally referred to together as the Americas. There is nothing weird nor wrong about this

As a brazilian, I have absolutely loved this new format

I don't see the issue here North and South are collectively known as the Americas, and if you're going to allow teams from outside South America to compete it only makes sense to let them host it as well.

Ecuador just had a country-wide blackout this week. Can you imagine if the Copa were being held there?

I'm Brazilian, and i think most south americans are happy with this edition of the copa america. We are a small continent, so having more countries participaring is nice, plus Mexico and USA have competitive teams to play against. I honestly think it's a Win/Win situation.

I feel like its not a real Copa America unless there are teams competing from both North and South America.

Something else to consider is how badly CONCACAF teams need this tournament from a competitive perspective. The USMNT has won every tournament in CONCACAF since 2021 where we had our top talent (Nations League and Gold Cup were splitting the rosters). As recent friendlies proved, all the CONCACAF teams are way behind South American ones.

I think if anything, having so many North American nations in the Copa America makes it more of a Copa America. Like it’s not the Copa America del Sur, so theoretically it’s not an issue if any team from the Americas plays in it

Copa America is basically what it should be. It's part of the American continent, not for South America alone.

As someone who live in the CONCACAF region I live this format much better. All the bigger countries treat the Gold Cup very passively as best, last Gold Cup all the bigger teams pretty much had the B squads playing. The European Championships best format was when it was 16 teams. Having all 10 South America and 6 CONCACAF members qualify is pretty fair split and still be pretty competitive.

I don't know what you're bitching about. Conmebol decided to make a cup together with CONCACAF, which makes sense. There aren't too many teams in South America. Expanded format includes a lot more teams, hence a lot more viewership, and a lot more money.

As a Colombian I really like this new format. The 5 team groups of the 2021 Copa were basically pointless because just one team per group was going home after the group stage, and in 2019 having those random invitees was also weird. I’d rather have other nations that are actually from the America’s be invited to participate rather than random nations like Qatar. Also having 16 nations instead of just 10 or 12 even if 6 of them are not from CONMEBOL is fine by me as long as they still are from the Americas because having 16 teams means that the tournament will follow a much better format. As far as the US being the hosts again, I don’t have a problem with that either. In the 2019 Copa some matches had absolutely dreadful attendance numbers, to the point that it was actually hard to see that our major continental trophy couldn’t pull even 10k fans for some games. South Americans won’t travel for the Copa America regardless of if it’s being held in our continent or in the US, so holding it in the US makes sense because as you said there is a large population of immigrants from every country who earn decent enough money and are able to attend, alongside the minority of people who reside in South America and are willing to travel and pay the costs.

As much as it IS a cash grab let's be honest NO country in south America except Brazil and Argentina (who have recently held the Copa America) could organize the tournament in the short time since Ecuador said they couldn't do it. Even then Argentina have a host of economic problems. As a South American I do think it sucks that a lot of recent tournaments have gone to the US but I genuinely think 16 team format with constant teams from all of america. Also adding Mexico and Canada to the pool of places it could be held isn't terrible. We do give a bit of proportional power to concacaf but I think this format makes the overall cake bigger

HOUSTON TEXAS MENTIONED WTF IS NO ROAD CONSTRUCTION 🗣️🗣️🗣️🗣️🗣️🗣️

It would be great if they made it official that Copa America is tournament for the whole of America and it's a 16 team tournament. CONMEBOL could still keep the advantage by having all 10 members quality automatically while out of 41 CONCACAF memvers only 6 qualify. CONCACAF can decide how they select those 6 teams, would it be a separate qualifications campaign or would they use either world cup qualifiers or CONCACAF gold cup as the qualifiers for Copa America. I'm not from South America myself and I don't know what locals think about it, but I know that when I watched Copa America and see Mexico or USA or any other North American countries, it didn't feel weird, but it was so weird seeing Japan and Qatar participating in Copa America.

"It's like as if Nigeria were at the Euros" - that's such an incredibly false equivalence that it genuinely stains the video

As a Mexican, it is really sad that the team prefers dollars thanks to the federation and its managers, as in Mexico the fans do demand results and boo, they prefer to escape to the United States, today there is a rift between the fans and the a team that will hardly be repaired, they don't even have matches with low-profile rivals, despite having excellent stadiums in CDMX, Puebla, Guadalajara and Monterrey, at this point the Mexican team should play the World Cup at home in the United States, It's really very sad

Football politics and maintenance of power will prevent Conmebol and Concacaf from merging. No executive's giving up their power for the sake of a healthier charge.

not sure if I'm ready to hear Alfie say "Copper America" over and over for almost 30 minutes (it's so funny how Brits often don't realize how they invent "r"s between vowels out of thin air!)

There is no R in Copa.

Why does having CONCACAF teams make it no longer Copa America? America isn’t just South America

As an Ecuadorian(the country where the copa was meant to be held) born,who lives in New York and next Tuesday I’ll get to see my favorite ever player and the greatest of all time, I’m so happy about this.

I think CONMEBOL and CONCACAF coming together to make this something permanent would actually be a good thing. The Copa America could have 10 CONMEBOL teams with 6 CONCACAF teams and the Gold Cup could have 10 CONCACAF teams with 6 CONMEBOL teams and just add USA and Mexico to the host country rotation. It would give CONCACAF the competition it needs to improve and CONMEBOL the American dollars it wants, in addition to keeping both continents/federations competitive with Europe so UEFA doesn't continue leaving everyone behind

In reality the hosting of Copa América has been a messy issue for decades thanks to CONMEBOL's own idiocy, it was always meant to be every 4 years but then CONMEBOL had it every 2 years in the 90s until 2001, then had it once in 2004 but they saw it having the same year as the Euros an issue so they decided it was going to be every 4 years the year between the year after the World Cup and before the Euro(which was how it was originally meant to be in the 70s and 80s) and that was the case with the exception of the 2016 edition(Again, why was that even a thing?), but suddenly in 2019 they decided it had to be the same year as the Euros so they were going to have another in 2020 so the following year after one was already played! That one ended up being played in 2021 because of COVID. In the end the next Copa América is meant to be played in 2028, don't be surprised if that date is changed around again. And the least we talk about CONMEBOL club competitions the better. All 10 south american football associations have their own fair share of issues particular to them but out of the six confederations CONMEBOL is likely the worst run one out there. The success of south american football is all in spite to CONMEBOL. Also the use of the name "Copa América" came long before there were any guests, it was first used in 1975, the first Copa América that had teams from outside CONMEBOL playing was in 1993.

You also have to consider that there are, what, 7-10+ million people of direct South American origin in the USA, which is 3 times as many people as Uruguay's population, for example. It's still essentially serving as a home atmosphere for a large number of South Americans.

As a peruvian fan, I think the Copa America in the USA was kind of a necesary step. The standard for football infrastructure has increased way past what any south american country but Brazil can offer. I want to see the Copa America here but we need time to recover and build infraestructure, Ecuador or Peru were'nt gonna cut it to be honest. We should maybe consider joint hosts in south america to distribute the infrastructure load between two or more countries. And about the prices, plane tickets from south america to USA are usually as expensive if not cheaper than plane tickets between south american countries, due to low demand.

Com' on, why do you have to represent Nigeria with an image of a village while depicting Europe with a cityscape? This kind of bias is disappointing and reminiscent of mainstream media. Nigeria has vibrant cities and diverse landscapes that deserve accurate representation.

As a Turk living in Scotland, I'd say I love the Copa America more than Euros, since it is the game of passion. I would love to see CONCACAF and CONMEBOL become one, although logistical nightmare certainly plays a role.

Copa America could be huge if they combined both confederations like this much more often. You get more teams, the big south american giants, and the big money from North America.

Nah. A decent amount of people have been thinking CONMEBOL and CONCACAF should just merge. To make a bigger and more competitive confederation.

Why not show a picture of a city in Nigeria rather than just a dry farmland but show a nice picture of Austria when mentioning it. The narrative people in the west have about Africa is appalling

I think the main difference to us is that in Spanish, the word América means "the Americas" as a whole, (This is also where that whole "you can't call yourselves Americans" feud with Americans comes from) it's actually the "the Americas Cup" so it doesn't really feel weird at all that it's done in the US, it feels weird that Concacaf is not included, in fact, we've tried to invite all of the Concacaf to join officially, but they've always refused, stating that the level of the teams involved clearly favors South America.

You can smell the Eurosnobbery exuding from this video

Lmao. You actually brought up the “high crime rate” and “mass shootings” like Brazil, Columbia, and other countries are just as bad. What a joke.

In Spanish there is no "North and South America" as separate continents. There is just one, America. For us the countries of "South America" are our brothers. Nothing weird playing this tournament together. If anything it bonds us stronger as a unified Latin American identity.

As a Paraguayan American I am okay with the United States being the permament host for every single future edition of Copa America 👌🏼

Its the Copa AMERICA. NEWSFLASH: North AMERICA is in the Americas. It isn't called the Copa SURAmerica, it's the Copa America.

its still a copa america its in america

The Copa America gets a controversial video, the AFCON gets a controversial video, the world cup gets a controversial video. The Euro gets "if you could bring a legend", and prediction videos. Where is the fairness in reporting? I will not try to dictate what HITC Sevens chooses to document but it is not fair reporting.

CONMEBOL and CONCACAF need to combine, it will improve quality across both continents and make World Cup qualification a lot more exciting

Bro United States is in America. The only thing weird here Is a man from England complaining about USA being part of copa America. I like your videos but this one is not it at all

Nigeria hosting the Euro made me laugh out loud 😂 thanks for mentioning us though 🇳🇬🇳🇬

Great video! Adding to the economic crisis in Ecuador there is a cartel war going on with the state which boiled over at the start of the year when cartel members stormed a tv station in a live broadcast and held them hostage and two of the most powerful drug kingpins in the country fled captivity. Since then the president Daniel Noboa has declared an internal armed conflict against the cartels. I highly doubt the Copa América would have gone ahead in Ecuador under these circumstances.

In Latin America, we consider north and south america the same continent. It's not the same as Africa hosting the EUROs. Africa is far more distinct to europe. While, culturally, the status of north america and south america not being one continent actually varies. More importantly, mexicans and americans are still in the Americas, so it's not that big of a deal to me.

Love your videos, but comparing the copa america in the us and the euros in Nigeria is an awful take.

As a mexican is very normal to move the copa america to EEUU, there is a lot of latin americans living there, and all of them love football, also this is a preparation for the next world cup, so yeah, is normal.

As someone from concacaf I’m actually a huge fan of those collaborations and I think it’ll help our football in near future

As a Colombian living in the US, I was initially excited to have the copa América held here again. Then I saw the prices of some of the tickets were going for, and I quickly changed my mind. It would way cheaper to travel to Ecuador and attend a Copa América game there, if they would've hosted, than to attend the final in Miami even though I already live here

Well, contrary to the Euro, Afcon or the Asian Cup, the Copa America was stuck with the same 10 teams without any chance for an expansion. We're living in an era of more, more, more so them wishing for a bigger tournament doesn't come as much of a surprise. Also, Ecuador was on the brink of a civil war early this year.

But it's called "Copa America" not "Copa Sudamerica", I don't see the issue 🤷

Huge disclaimer from an actual latino- we don’t care about north and south america. it’s just America🤷‍♂️

I think this topic is more nuanced than the video covered. But it is nice to see a video about Copa America. So, thanks for it! As a Brazilian, it's not that common of a complaint US hosting the Copa America. It will be if the rotation stops, and some people are saying that the 2024 Copa America will be in the US as well. That's more concerning for me, at least. As for the number of participants, a 16-team cup is viewed as a way better tournament than a 10 or 12 one. And for the best ones to be invited, culturally and practically, are the ones from Concacaf. We even sometimes wonder about the Mexican teams to come back to Libertadores as well. Also, here in Brazil and in other countries, we don't call our continent "South America". It's "America," including the North and the South. And, besides the memes between Mexico and Argentina, we see many countries in the North as our brothers and sisters. We share a culture and a heritage. We see the same series, telenovelas, listen to the same music (Brazil, not always), and eat some of the same foods. We also have rivalries with countries from the North, with Mexico and Argentina as a big example of it. So, it's still a little sad to see Copa America far from the South. But, if that's something to happen from time to time, with a 16-team tournament, that's not that big of a deal, I think.

As an American, it’s awesome to have good games. As an American, it sucks that our ticketing processes are so horrible.

Listen bro... I love u and your content, but this right here is a bad perespective on the look of the copa america. In ancient times as is (or what feels ancient at this point) people used to see north, central (yeah cuz people just lump it in with north america), and south america as its own single continent (america). It was worldwide knowledge it was africa, america, asia, australia(yes australia was its own thing as well), and europe. This tournament brings the tournament back to its roots of how america as a whole should be viewed and is an effort to heavily advance football (or soccer if you are from the americas speaking english). Concacaf needs their countries to face higher competition to then perform better in the world cup, which in turn would have millions more in what u see as north america, tune in and/or fall in love with the sport. Conmebol has had a dying tournament for some time now because south america lacks more countries (obviously because south america wasn't supposed to be split into its own thing in the first place). The euros with their highly modern fields and vast countries to see go at it obv had copa beat. There is also the snobby "sophiticated" aesthetic that revolves around european soccer, that simply isn't carried around copa. For the most part in history, south america simply dazzled u with its "street soccer" as best emphasized by edu vargas sending iker casillas flying in the 2014 world cup, and as far as usa and canada stood, they didn't even care about it. You're not getting entertaining antics like luis suarez biting somebody, marcelo bielsa's squads 1v1 marking like it's basketball, or the tricks/skill moves of creative play in the euros. Set pieces, spaced out robotic formations, track athletes doing cardio with little to no technical ability is common, and crosses often gets boring.

Just scrap the Golden Cup for a “combined Copa America”

I'm Chilean and to be honest the Copa America has always been a whatever detailswise. The history of the tournament is full of random bullshit, which makes you naturalizing any unusual thing. You said you would feel weird if 40% of the euros team aren't from Europe, but I wouldnt feel weird if the Copa America has several non Conmebol countries and even lacks a few Conmebol teams just because this happens from time to time It's not news if a dog bites a man but it's news if a man bites a dog sort of deal.

2:45 Its really nothing like Afcon being hosted in Austria lmao. The Latin American diaspora in the USA is insanely huge. The US can host big tournaments and a reminder that the record game attendance for a World Cup is the US in 1994, extra impressive because they had 12 less games than all the world cups since. More bums on seats than Germany, France, Japan, even Brazil could manage with 12 extra games. they have the facilities and population to host big events like this. Plus Its good for the best of concacaf to perform on a big stage other than the World Cup. (I havent finished the video yet so maybe he agrees with me)

Sadly, Freddy Adu never got to played at Copa America.

I don't understand how ppl can be mad that the Copa America now includes North America, it just makes the tournament more exciting, inclusive, competitive, lucrative, and entertaining

América, my friend, is a continent from Canadá to Argentina. La Copa America, yes it was played only in South America but, it would be more interesting if all the countries of our continent AMERICA (no Americas) have the opportunity to play the oldest and most important competition of the continent.

What I don't agree with you is that for us américa is a whole thing. South and north. And in football it should be that way. Our copa américa should always have concacaf. It makes it bigger and more interesting.And teams like México need it more than ever to up their game.

as a peruvian this video was so hard to watch holy shit. why isn’t there a single european channel who knows jack shit about conmebol, not even the littlest of knowledge😒

It’s Copa America, not Copa Sudamerica. It is nothing like having African or Asian teams in the Euros. Most people understand that there’s probably gonna be a merger or in the future, a proper Copa between both confederations. Also what you said about the Copa America being held every 4 years is simply untrue. It was held every for years only twice from 2007 to 2011 to 2015. Before that it was sporadically and usually every 2 or 3 years. Also no one who travels to the Copa America games even thinks about any political situations going on in the host nation unless the situation is absolutely dire. If it’s not a situation like Haiti then it’s perfectly fine to host it.

just saying, north america and south america should be playing one continental competition

Concacaf meaning Canada, Mexico and USA, the six Central American countries and the rest of Conmebol should just make one conferation

The cultural and educational facts that many people ignore is that in the Anglo-Saxon world’s view, there are three Americas, North America, Central America (including the Caribbean) and South America; whereas in the Spanish speaking world also known as Latin America, there’s only one continent called AMERICA and it’s view as one whole region. So, having Canada, the United States and Mexico as well as Central American nations competing in the COPA AMERICA tournament makes a lot of sense. 👍

I am all for CONMEBOL and CONCACAF merging as much as possible. It will be great for the football quality of both continents. However, any deal has to have protections to avoid the USA swallowing up everything (money and hosting rights). Merging the Gold Cup and Copa America makes much sense; it is OK if its always all 10 CONMEBOL teams plus 6 CONCACAF. And I'd go as far as merging the Libertadores and CONCACAF Champions as well.

I paid $260 for a semi final ticket in Charlotte. Level 5, row 1. How much is a ticket to the Euro semi final?

Thanks Alfie, learned a lot about the Copper America today!

It would make so much sense for the Copa America and Concacaf Gold Cup to merge and create one Pan-American championship.

Truth is we South Americans know a tournament composed by just 10/12 teams isn't as amazing as a regular ol' 16 team tournament. And to be honest, we aren't exactly against extending the invitiation to the best teams in concacaf. We'd love to host a 24 nations tournament like the Euro but it's impossible

Every country in the Americas that has made it to the Copa previously on merit, or is ranked by FIFA at least in the top 25, should be eligible, to host assuming they have the infrastructure and are safe enough to properly host. The US hosting Copa America is entirely appropriate. The only argument against it is that other countries should have been given further consideration, since the US has hosted 2 of the last 3. It's not inappropriate like Qatar hosting the World Cup.

It’s called Copa America, not Copa South America. That’s like the Euros being held in Germany. Yeah, they are a part of Europe…

In the US there are more than enough latin american fans that live and work there. Also, we have seen how Argentinians, Brazilians and Uruguayans for example spare no expenses travelling to countries like Qatar or Russia. CONMEBOL may not like it, but for me the best format is this one, with six CONCACAF teams. That is much better than inviting Japan and Qatar

You ain't lying about the ticket prices. I have season tickets for Charlotte FC and was thinking about buying tickets for one of the Charlotte games (semi-final, 3rd place). I love my seats for Charlotte FC and was going to purchase the same for Copa America. The price difference was 400%. I'll be watching the games on TV.

Almost nobody in the Americas has a problem with this new format...it seems to be Europeans that don't like it lmao

To compare the US to the crime and political instability of South America is wild lol. It's not even the same strateosphere.

you need to talk about the welsh premier league. despite the recent success of the welsh national team, the league is seriously ignored, and only has 1 proffesional team (that happens to be in england ffs)

Hi Alfie, first of all amazing work, love your videos so much! Just to clarify, as a former Chilean resident I can say with some confidence that the concept of North/South America doesn't really exist in South America. The whole landmass is seen as just "América". In fact the colloquial term for citizens of the USA is "norteamericanos" a term which is even used in Mexico despite Europeans understanding Mexico itself as being in the continent of North America. So yeah, anyway, basically in their view America is a single continent.

They should stop inviting teams from Asia and Europe. They should stick to the format of keeping the 10 nations of South America and the rest from the North and Central America depending on their performance from concacaf gild cup and concacaf nations league

Bro it’s called the copa AMERICA not the copa SUDAMERICANA it’s not that deep that the us host again

To be fair - I'd be all for Conmebol and Concacaf just flat out merging. I think it'd be excellent

I disagree with you saying it’s like afcon being hosted in Austria.. I. Latin America we are taught north and South America is one continent. Also North America is not just usa we have Mexico and several Central American countries and Caribbean nations as well

It is called Copa America not Copa South America

About the name still being "Copa América" there is an important cultural factor that most people don't know about. "Continents" don't have a precise definition. While for English speakers South America and North America are two continents with similar names, for most Spanish and Portuguese speakers, America (yes, just America) is one continent split in three (North, Central and South). So, while 10/16 teams are from South America, all 16 teams are from America (except for people in the US who think there's only one team from America, and the others are from "the Americas"). Also, I've always thought that CONMEBOL and CONCACAF should be just one confederation. I find it very weird that CONMEBOL has only 10 teams and always the same matches over and over (Guyana, Surinam and French Guyana play in CONCACAF), and CONCACAF certainly needs more competition.

Believe me, American citizens have a problem with the price gouging in every aspect of our entertainment industry. It's our politicians who are bought out by these corporations and don't give a crap. Although let's hope this antitrust suit against Ticketmaster can change some things.

If the Copa America had always included all the Americas, not just South, and they wanted to split the tournament in North and South I reckon the same people who are getting angry now would've gotten angry in that scenario as well

Hey alfie, could you please start uploading it as a podcast also? Your content is perfect as an audio only template and mostly the long form content would be great while having a walk