CONMEBOL on Monday announced that the 2021 Copa America has been moved to Brazil. The tournament was earlier scheduled to host by Argentina and Columbia. However, the spike in COVID-19 cases and the social unrest in Columbia forced CONMEBOL to shift the biggest football tournament in South America to Brazil which also hosted the tournament in 2019.
South America’s CONMEBOL football federation tweeted that “The CONMEBOL Copa America 2021 will be played in Brazil!” and the schedule of the tournament remains the same.
Brazil have a rich experience of organizing top-level sporting events, with the 2014 FIFA World Cup, the 2019 FIFA U-17 World Cup and the CONMEBOL Copa América 2019, among others.
“The Brazilian government demonstrated agility and decision-making capacity at a fundamental moment for South American football,” said CONMEBOL president Alejandro Domínguez, who added that “Brazil is experiencing a moment of stability, it has proven infrastructure and accumulated experience and recently to organize a competition of this magnitude ”
CONMEBOL on Sunday confirmed that Copa America will not be played in Argentina in view of the current COVID-19 circumstances.
Earlier this month, Colombia was ruled incapable of hosting the tournament amid civil unrest and increasing cases of coronavirus.
This was the first time since 1983 that Copa America was going to be held in two nations, Argentina and Colombia. The competition will have 10 teams participating with two groups of five teams each.
Copa America is the oldest football competition of national teams in the world. This will be the 47th edition of this prestigious competition organised by South America’s football ruling body CONMEBOL.