Two Argentinian journalists leave the Met Life Stadium in New Jersey. The Copa America group stage match between Argentina and Chile is over. It is 12:20 at night, and with the public having left the stadium an hour ago, if they were able to get on the last train heading for the interchange station to get to New York, Secaucus—for which they can only climb the turnstile because of the chaos, there is no way to get there if everyone stops to pay the ticket at the vending machine—and pray that they can connect with an Uber to come and pick them up and not be stranded on a kind of island, with no connection to the city.

But there is no way to give a reference to the Uber, nor does the service have a way to get to the vicinity of the stadium. One of the two journalists is a native of the province of Santa Fe and appeals to his last resort, a fellow countryman who lives in Newark, the area of the stadium, and so he came to pick him up in his car and set the alarm clock to go off. But they don't manage to find each other, and the two of them wander around the stadium for an hour. Even with WhatsApp communication, they don't manage to find each other.

When the miracle finally happens, it is almost 1.30 in the morning, and the journalist will arrive at his Airbnb at 2 a.m. because most of the Latin journalists covering the Copa América, South America's most prestigious national team tournament, cannot afford to pay the very high hotel rates. The next day, in the morning, the same journalist will have to get up early to catch an early flight to Miami to cover the Argentina-Peru match.

The Copa América corresponds to what used to be called the South American Championship, historically dominated by Argentina and Uruguay, but since 1987, Conmebol (South American Football Confederation) changed the format. For many years, until 1983, each edition was played with matches in each country, From Argentina in 1987, every two years it rotated to different countries, although in 2001 it jumped to three until 2004. When completing the round of the ten nations of the continent, it went to four years between one tournament and another, starting in 2011 again with Argentina.

However, in 2016, after having played the Copa América in Chile in 2015, Conmebol decided to play in 2016 an "Extra" tournament in the United States, which is part of Concacaf (Confederation of North, Central American, and Caribbean Association Football), which led to the addition of four more teams to the usual twelve (ten South American and two guests).

The reason it was officially announced, was that it was the centenary of Conmebol's first South American Championship (1916). Since then, although the tournaments returned to the South American continent for 2019 and 2021 (both in Brazil, in the second case because Argentina and Colombia, who were going to organise it jointly, resigned due to the coronavirus pandemic), they immediately returned to the United States in 2024 and again with the 2016 format: 16 teams divided into four groups of four participants.

The striking thing about this case is that the tournament was to be held in Ecuador, but during the World Cup in Qatar, obscured by the media noise of such an important football event, few found out that the leaders of the Ecuadorian Federation resigned from the task, and just a week later everything was already decided: Copa America would return to the United States, which would also get the 32-team Club World Cup (for the first time in history) for the summer of 2025, and at the same time in 2026 would share the organisation of the 2026 World Cup with Canada and Mexico, although the United States would host 78 of the total 104 matches.

For some analysts, it seems no coincidence that the United States received such a precious gift: three strong tournaments in a row at its headquarters, just when there was a surprising change of rudder in the New York justice system with South American leaders and media businessmen linked to one of the most serious episodes of corruption in football, the so-called "FIFA-Gate," a criminal system whereby the strongest media businessmen in the Americas bribed the former leaders of CONMEBOL to take over the TV broadcasting rights to the main tournaments, paying a low price, and then reselling those same rights at exorbitant prices and keeping the advertising revenue.

As many of these payments to banks were made to accounts in the United States, the justice system investigated the facts with the help of moles who cooperated in exchange for a reduced sentence, and were thus able to imprison several of those involved. Several analysts attribute this kind of interest on the part of the US justice system to the fact that in 2010, in Zurich, FIFA awarded the organisation of the 2022 World Cup to a country with no football tradition and a climate of very high summer temperatures, such as Qatar, over the United States, something that aroused strong suspicions.

However, many of those leaders and businessmen, a decade later (it all began in 2015), were released or began to live a process of pardons or amnesties just when the United States received the organisation of these three tournaments in a row, and not only that: FIFA itself, with years in Zurich as headquarters, was moving part of it to the territory of the United States.

But back to the current tournament, was the United States ready to host a tournament of such magnitude? Renowned Argentine journalist Jorge Barraza, who also worked for decades in Conmebol's press department, conducted a market study and calculated that if the tournament were held in Ecuador, as originally thought, it would have raised around US$20 million, optimistically. In the United States, without having to work even a quarter of that, Conmebol's management could be raking in $2 billion (a hundred times more) for the amount of business that comes in just because of the type of country.

Barraza explains it well: "Those who gain the most from organising the tournament in the United States are the owners of American football teams, because soccer matches are played in stadiums for no more than 25,000 spectators, and on the other hand, by renting American football stadiums, made for 65,000 to 80,000, they can collect much more money, added, in many cases, to the resale of tickets. But there is a second box office, which is the car parks surrounding these stadiums, with a revenue of 40 to 100 dollars per car if they are placed near or far away, and you have to calculate around 30,000 per game, a spectacular figure.

Finally, food, because people in the United States go to stadiums to eat and spend between 100 and 150 dollars. And of course, you have to add the companies or the ticket resale business" (just as an example: for the final between Argentina and Colombia at the Hard Rock Stadium in Miami, tickets were resold from 2250 to 6500 dollars).

With these business values, how could Ecuador not give up hosting the tournament and, a week later, host it in the United States? Barraza argues that the Copa América, despite being organised by a cold country that knows little or nothing about football, "is here to stay" and gives a clear example: the CONCACAF Gold Cup was played in venues such as Trinidad and Tobago, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Mexico, but in 1991 it was organised in the United States, and since then, it has never left and 17 editions have been played in the same country. It is impossible to compete with the business that emanates from this country, and without having to work hard in meetings for two or three years, for the leaders of the other countries to get so little personal gain. Too much effort to see too little gain. On this point, the United States is a party, although the country receives the proposal without much effort and almost no struggle to achieve it. Just the thought that there are some 65 million Latino immigrants in the country is enough.

But is the United States, beyond the business it can generate, capable of organising a major football tournament? As Barraza rightly argues, the distances are so enormous in a country that hosts a tournament in 14 cities in an area of 9,147,593 square kilometres, that to have thought of an American tournament with venues in cities on the east and west coasts of the country is almost untenable. "It's as if the Paris Olympics were to host athletics in Moscow, sailing in Stockholm, swimming in Madrid, and weightlifting in Istanbul. There is no unifying character.

Barraza, 69, who has vast experience of World Cups and America's Cups and works for the media in Ecuador, Colombia, and other South American countries, had renewed his passport and obtained a visa to enter the United States, but finally gave up the trip to watch it all on TV. "I didn't spend a dollar, but at a certain age, I'm no longer in a position to eat badly, to travel at any time over long distances with a backpack on my back, not knowing if I'm going to get a pass to talk to the players because the organisation no longer knows who each journalist is and their track record doesn't matter," and he concludes: "The special envoy is dead. Today, it is no longer relevant," and he gives us two examples: the powerful "ESPN" network preferred to buy the rights to the European Championship, which was played in parallel to the Copa América, and sent almost its entire team to Germany, while Colombian networks such as "RCN" or "Caracol," which always followed the national team, this time preferred to broadcast from the studios and, at most, have a journalist on the pitch.

Barraza had in mind to watch around seven Copa América matches, "but after carrying out a feasibility study, I realised that this was impossible, corroborated by colleagues who live there and who told me that rather than the matches of a national team, I should forget about it, due to lack of time and infrastructure. These colleagues told me that I was right not to travel.

During the days of the coverage of the Argentina-Chile match in New Jersey, this writer wanted to watch on TV the match being played in another city between Colombia and Panama, but walking through the centre of New York he barely found a very expensive pub that was broadcasting it and after drinking a sparkling mineral water, he decided to look for another, cheaper place to watch Brazil-Uruguay, a historic classic. He had an hour between the end of one match and the start of the next, but only found a family restaurant that was showing it on a TV facing a bar with about eight seats, but the other four screens were showing a pop music recital. "It's a family-oriented restaurant," a waitress explained.

This journalist managed to sit at a table behind the bar, from where, with difficulty, he could watch the match, resigned to the fact that all the seats in front of him were taken. However, around twenty-five minutes into the first half, he realised that those sitting in the bar had no interest in the match and gradually left. Finally, he was left alone in the bar, with the other seven seats unoccupied. No one else watched the game.

In the United States, football (soccer) is something else. It is of little interest to non-Latinos, and there are too many congresses, meetings, and shows, so it is something else, like any other activity, and therefore, there will never be a spectacular, festive atmosphere in the country, as this writer found in Russia, Qatar, Brazil, Germany, or Italy. Impossible. Arriving at the "Met Life" stadium in an Uber, at times we were going at a man's pace and then came the comment to the driver, surprised by so much mobilisation. "Are you so interested in soccer here?" was the question. "No, what soccer? Sir, it's rush hour, the time when people leave work and go home."

During the Copa América matches, the journalists are located on level 6 (sixth floor), from where not only do the players look like little dolls, but they are almost all housed behind one of the goals, making it difficult to see what is happening in the other, more distant one, but also, the desk is behind a kind of window-shade that prevents one from hearing the ambient sound, and although it has two TV sets, they do not repeat the plays or report the changes or the line-ups. One discovers that these are the same monitors used for the general public.

In many of the tournament stadiums, moreover, they boast of the record number of hours, sometimes even less than a day, to change the artificial turf, where American football matches are usually played, for the natural grass that football needs, but of course, then the ball stings badly, because those patches of grass are soft and fly through the air, which generates uncertainty for the players and even serious chances of injury.

An observer from FIFA (which is not involved in the organisation of the tournament) told this journalist that the highest football institution does not look favourably on much of what happened in this Copa America and is clear that for the championships that fall within its remit, in 2025 and 2026, "too many things have to be changed. That's not the way it's going.

At the end of the tournament, CONMEBOL was analysing what measures to take with the Uruguayan players who, at the end of the semi-final against Colombia in which they were eliminated, jumped into the stands to defend their family and friends who were being attacked by rival fans, some of whom were drunk, and who were not sufficiently protected.

"The burden of proof is reversed, and I am asked at my press conference what I think of the possible sanctions against the players, but it is not said that their families were unprotected and that the minimum was to go to defend them, nor can it be said that the state of the grass on the pitches is deplorable," said an indignant Marcelo Bielsa, the Argentine coach of the Uruguayan national team, after the harsh incidents.

If each participating national team takes about 2 million dollars and, at most, about 20 million dollars, and the organisation earns 350 million from ticket sales alone, it seems that others are the ones taking the profits, while the president of Conmebol, Alejandro Domínguez, always smiling for the TV cameras and social networks, never gave a press conference. It is clear that those who earn the most in this Copa America are not the direct protagonists of football, but the United States is projected as the greatest host of all.

Welcome to football, Uncle Sam.