La Reina del Plata was the birthplace… (Opinion by Jorge Barraza, Último Tango)

It was the middle of the southern winter of 1916. A Argentina prosperous city celebrated with pomp the first centenary of its independence and, among the many jubilee events, the government of that time commissioned the football authorities to organize an international tournament, just as had been successfully carried out there in 1910, among Argentina, Chile and Uruguay, the host being champion. That preface of the 10th is not considered official, the South American Football Confederation.

In 1913, the athlete José Claudio Susán, footballer and manager of the Estudiantes club of Buenos Aires (not La Plata), made a formal proposal to create a South American competition that would be called America Cup, which was published on October 16 of that year in the newspaper Argentina: “The Argentine Football Association resolves to hold a football competition annually, establishing the Copa América for this purpose.

The Uruguayan, Chilean and Brazilian leagues will be invited to join this project, and if so, they must send a team to compete in the Cup. This tournament will be held in Buenos Aires. If any of the participating leagues wish for the tournament to be held at their seat, they must request it at the delegates meeting that will be held during the playing season of the previous year. It is understood that each league in such case will bear the organization and expenses that the tournament demands.”

It is therefore up to Susan the copyright of this wonderful saga. His project and the two original competitions –1910 and 1916– held in Buenos Aires and through an Argentine initiative, they gave albiceleste football the indisputable patent as promoter of the idea. Very visionary: the World Cups and the World Cup did not yet exist. Euro Cupand the Olympic Games They were suspended due to the First World War. Even Fifa was a baby taking its first steps.

The then Argentine Football Association In October 1913 he sent a telegram to his peers Brazil, Chile and Uruguay inviting them to compete for the “South American Football Championship” trophy. The newspaper Argentinaof October 26, 1913, on page 8, reported the affirmative response of the Eastern soccer leader: “The Uruguayan League has informed the Argentine Football Association of its adherence to the South American championship that it organizes, and for whose contest, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Worship has donated a magnificent cup.”

The note from the Uruguayan League says: “Montevideo, October 23, 1913. Mr. President of the Argentine Football Association. The League has learned that the foreign ministry of the Argentinian republic has donated a trophy for the South American football championship, and which will be competed for by Uruguayans, Brazilians, Chileans and Argentines every year. In response, I have the pleasure of expressing to you that the League commission has resolved to lend its full support so that this new championship obtains all the success that corresponds to its character. (Signed) Abelardo Vescovi, president.”

Due to internal divisions in football Brazil and Chile that prevented their participation, the tournament could not be held until 1916. At that time, Buenos Aires was the only capital of South America which had stages capable of holding tens of thousands of spectators. That Argentine fans call it a field, as in Uruguay they are called a park and in the rest of the continent, a stadium. It was done in Palermo in the, for the time, formidable English-style Gimnasia y Esgrima venue in Buenos Aires (again: not in La Plata), capable of hosting 25,000 people.

The Great War had already claimed nine million lives in Europe. The fields of France They were a gigantic pool of blood. On July 1, 1916, human carnage broke out north of Paris: the bloody Battle of the Somme. It was a catastrophe: British troops alone suffered 57,740 casualties that first day, the United Kingdom's largest combat loss in its entire war history, which is not short.

Twenty-four hours later, 11,000 kilometers to the southeast, ten thousand enthusiastic fans came to watch Uruguay 4-Chile 0, the first of the 837 matches that make up the Copa América so far. Heartbreaking screams there, joyful shouts of goal here. Today, more than a century later, it will seem incredible, but thousands of Uruguayans crossed the lion-colored river to see Celeste.

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They traveled on the Carrera steamship, which left Montevideo at 10 at night and arrived in Buenos Aires at 7 in the morning. Only the ticket was required, there were no migrations between Uruguay and Argentina. “It was like taking the tram,” described the brilliant Diego Lucero.

That first year was a tournament held by the Argentine Associationin which four of the five associations that existed so far took part: the host and her colleagues from Brazil, Chile and Uruguay. Paraguay It was like Santa Marta, It had a train, but no tram, since the Paraguayan League had already been founded, however, it did not yet form a team.

Precisely, as a result of that international conclave, the parent entity of continental football was born. On July 9, meeting in the middle of the contest, the delegates of the participating teams decided to create the Conmebol at the initiative of the Uruguayan politician and journalist Héctor Rivadavia Gómez, president of the Montevideo Wanderers. And among all of them they agreed to give annual continuity to the competition that was being held, which from now on would be called South American Football Championship Copa América, as Susan had proposed.

A jewelry store in downtown Buenos Aires was commissioned to make the trophy, the beautiful piece of goldsmithing that we know, in silver with a wooden base. The popular was born Cup, because club football divides, national team football unites. The stadium was packed from the first to the last day of that baptismal version.

Immediately the fever over their dispute spread throughout the continent. But it was a joyful, life-giving virus that did not require masks. Their dispute was a festive and social event in the towns where it was played. And so it would continue to the present, 108 years later. After that birth in 1916 the world championships would arrive, the Libertadores Cup and other new international disputes, however, the America Cup It maintained its freshness and attractiveness until today. That refers to its magnetism.

In October 2006, Joseph Blatter He gave us an exclusive interview in Asunción; we give you the book of the America Cup what we do in Conmebol a few years ago; Looking through the photos of that 1916 edition, he was amazed and coined a phrase for the times: “Europe is always said to be the Old Continent, but in football the Old Continent is South America”.
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Last tango
JORGE BARRAZA
For the time
@JorgeBarrazaOK