CONMEBOL

• 1. Introduction

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  CONMEBOL began as an afterthought to a national birthday party. In 1916, four South American football associations organized a tournament to mark the 100th anniversary of Argentina's declaration of independence. Delegates met in Buenos Aires to watch the games, then decided the sport needed a permanent body to run future editions. That body still governs the continent today from its headquarters in Luque, Paraguay. Its national teams have since combined for ten FIFA World Cup titles: five for Brazil, three for Argentina, two for Uruguay.

  How did a tournament built for a centennial celebration grow into the oldest of football's six continental confederations? And how did an organization founded to mark independence end up, decades later, facing federal charges an ocean away?

• 2. Founding a Federation

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  On the 9th of July 1916, representatives from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Uruguay formally founded CONMEBOL. The new organization's creation was ratified five months later, on the 15th of December, at the first Constitutional Congress in Montevideo.

  Six additional South American football associations joined in the decades that followed. Venezuela was the last to come aboard, affiliating with CONMEBOL in 1952. That slow, decade-by-decade expansion is why CONMEBOL's membership looks the way it still does today.

• 3. The Smallest Confederation

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  Argentina's football association dates to 1893, the oldest of CONMEBOL's members. It joined FIFA in 1912, four years before CONMEBOL itself existed.

  CONMEBOL itself has only ten member associations in total, fewer than any other continental confederation in FIFA. It is also the only fully continental, land-based confederation in the sport, with no island members and none based outside South America.

  Colombia's association was founded in 1924 but did not affiliate with CONMEBOL until 1936, a twelve-year gap between the two milestones.

  Several South American countries and territories, meanwhile, sit outside CONMEBOL entirely, aligned instead with CONCACAF, the governing body for North and Central America. Paraguay's own association, founded in 1906, joined CONMEBOL in 1921, four years before it joined FIFA, an unusual order for a national federation.

• 4. Continental Silverware

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  Copa América stands as CONMEBOL's most prestigious competition for men's national teams, and it is the only continental tournament in the world that regularly invites teams from outside its own confederation. CONMEBOL fills out the field by inviting teams from the AFC and CONCACAF.

  Two competitions sit atop the club game: the Copa Libertadores and the Copa Sudamericana. The Copa Sudamericana launched in 2002 as the successor to the Supercopa Libertadores. A third competition, the Copa CONMEBOL, ran only from 1992 to 1999 before it was abolished. CONMEBOL also runs the Copa Libertadores Femenina, its championship for women's clubs.

  The Recopa Sudamericana pits the reigning Copa Libertadores winner against the reigning Copa Sudamericana winner each year. A separate Intercontinental Cup, organized jointly with UEFA between the Libertadores and Champions League winners, was discontinued in 2004.

  Across all of that competition, CONMEBOL clubs have collected 22 Intercontinental Cups and four FIFA Club World Cups, while Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay have each won two Olympic gold medals in men's football. Those trophies have been awarded under just a handful of CONMEBOL presidents across the confederation's history, beginning with Héctor Rivadavia Gómez.

• 5. The Presidency

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  Alejandro Domínguez of Paraguay has held CONMEBOL's presidency since January 2016. Francisco Egas of Ecuador serves as vice president, and José Astigarraga, also of Paraguay, serves as general secretary.

  Héctor Rivadavia Gómez led the confederation from 1916 to 1936, its first two decades. Teófilo Salinas Fuller then held the post from 1966 to 1986, a second twenty-year stretch decades later. Nicolás Léoz served the longest of anyone, from 1986 to 2013, twenty-seven years in total.

  After Léoz, the presidency changed hands three times in three years. Eugenio Figueredo held it from 2013 to 2014, Juan Ángel Napout from 2014 to 2015, and Wilmar Valdez from 2015 to 2016. That sudden turnover followed a period the confederation would rather forget.

• 6. The Zürich Arrests

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  On the 27th of May 2015, Swiss police arrested several CONMEBOL leaders in Zürich, Switzerland. The U.S. Department of Justice indicted them on charges of corruption, money laundering, and racketeering.

  Among those swept up were two former CONMEBOL presidents, Eugenio Figueredo and Nicolás Léoz, along with football administrators Carlos Chávez and Sergio Jadue. On the 3rd of December 2015, CONMEBOL President Juan Ángel Napout was arrested as well.

  Napout's arrest came seven months after the Zürich raids. That meant three presidents of CONMEBOL, spanning different points in its history, had faced the same charges within a single calendar year.