A Copa América on the couch (Last Tango, opinion by Jorge Barraza)

You get off, rent another car and drive the almost 29 kilometers from the airport to the coliseum. Of course, this will mean a total of about 12 or 15 hours of travel and around $1,000 in cost. But you could try. It’s more or less like watching a game live on Saturday in Buenos Aires and another on Sunday in Guayaquil. For the same tournament…

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This is what it will be like, in broad strokes, to follow the Copa América in the United States. It is still a source of pride that our continental tournament, the first in the world, expands and is imported to other latitudes. Without a doubt, the location in Lincoln’s homeland increases its prestige. It is a universal sounding board. However, let’s be clear: it will be a drink for television. And for Latinos residing in the United States, who already number 65 million. They love football and will follow their teams. The Colombian to Colombia, the Peruvian to Peru and so on. Very few, minimal, will go from South America. Anyone who can spend a few thousand dollars may be able to accompany their national team in three or four games, no more.

“It will be the best Copa América in history,” announced the president of Conmebol, Alejandro Domínguez. Maybe. And the one that generates the most income, that is without a doubt. We estimate them at around 2,000 million dollars, something unimaginable if it were carried out in South America.

However, it will be uncomfortable even for those who live in the United States. A dispersed Cup, with 32 matches in 14 sub-venues, in some cases cities with one match, others with two. And all this in a gigantic territory like that of the United States, with enormous distances between the sub-headquarters. Mostly local audiences will attend each site. Difficult to move. And completely unviable for journalism. Only for those who must report and transmit the matches of their country’s team.

It will be the total opposite of the “Qatar concept”, which organized a World Cup in a single city – Doha –, where everything was at hand, the eight stadiums nearby and connected by highways and the subway. A wonder that may not be repeated in a thousand years. In Qatar there were fans and journalists who witnessed up to three matches on site on the same day. They wanted to try that experience. It was possible due to the proximity and schedules.

“Here I don’t think anyone can watch even five games in the stadium, it’s very brave. This is not Qatar, where everything was close, accessible, fantastic,” says Manolo Rosero, an Ecuadorian television producer who has lived in Houston for years. Manolo, who works for El Universo, toured the 14 Cup venues.

He adds: “All the stadiums are far from the cities. You can only go to three by train. To get to them you must go by car, renting one. Parking starts at $40. And that, very far from the stadium, 100 if you want a place close by. If you don’t have a car, a taxi will charge you $100 a ride from your hotel to the stadium. The cost of tickets is very high and so are internal trips. “In June-July, a Miami-New York ticket will be between 800 and 900 dollars,” says Rafael Crisóstomo, a Peruvian photographer with 40 years of residence in the northern country.

“I will drive to four games, the ones that are more or less close to Daytona Beach, where I live. I don’t know if I’ll dare to go to a fifth in Charlotte. I have an hour to Orlando, three and a half to Miami and six to Atlanta, where Argentina. This Cup is very difficult for journalists,” says Crisóstomo.

For those who decide to go to the United States and attend three or four games, then they will be able to watch the rest on television. “You can stay and see them comfortably in your hotel, but for that you have to pay, here everything is paid for. Each game costs between 26 and 36 dollars,” reports Rosero. The Messi phenomenon triggered everything. There is a before and after of Messi. This is a Cup designed for television and to give more strength to soccer in the US.

You can get a hotel for $150 a night, certainly not the most expensive. Renting a car costs between 80 and 90 dollars a day. “But to that you have to add tolls and gasoline. So it is not cheap to travel by car either. From New Jersey to Charlotte, the GPS tells you nine hours, but you can never do it in less than eleven, because you must stop to eat and rest a little,” says Manolo Rosero, who made the trip. There is no doubt: the best place to watch the Cup is in the living room.
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​(Also: 15 times Real Madrid! They won the Champions League against a very tough Borussia Dortmund)

Is there already a Copa atmosphere? We asked Manolo. “No, very little, and that, among Latinos. To give you an idea, in Houston we have a soccer team in the MLS, the Houston Dynamo, I ask my gringo neighbors and they don’t know what the Dynamo is, they haven’t even heard its name. During the tour of the 14 stadiums, some of the administrators did not know that the Copa América was being played or that it was a tournament. They told us: ‘Oh, no wonder they reserved the stadium for us for that date.’ But this will help popularize football more.”

Our colleague in Qatar 2022 adds: “This reminds me in a way of Japan 2002, there wasn’t much of a cup atmosphere, if you walked down the street you didn’t feel like you were in a World Cup. There the two most popular sports are baseball and golf. At night we watched sports programs on TV and it was half an hour of baseball, fifteen minutes of golf and at the end a little bit of soccer.” But twenty-four years later it can be said that number five caught on in the land of the rising sun. And not to mention how much progress they made while playing, they went from not having the slightest idea to qualifying for the last eight consecutive World Cups.

The Copa América is a world brand, it surpassed our eternally developing, hyper-politicized countries, almost always in economic crises, with tremendous insecurity and great shortcomings. We wonder what it would have been like to play the Copa América today in Ecuador, which was supposed to receive it due to the rotating organization criteria. Ecuador gave up setting it up, and it was probably the right decision. But, we wonder: which South American country will be in a position to host it after the income that the United States 2024 will show…? Will we have it back in 2028…? Will you go to Mexico…? Who knows.
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Last tango…
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Jorge Barraza
​For TIME
@JorgeBarrazaOK