page_title: South American Championship of Champions
section_title: Summary
hierarchical_section_title: South American Championship of Champions / Summary
caption_attribution_description: English: Alfredo Di Stéfano (?) try to attack the Vasco da Gama goal while the goalkeeper catches the ball.
context_page_description: The South American Championship of Champions was a football competition played in Santiago, Chile in 1948 and the first continental-wide football tournament in South America. Hosted and organized by Chilean club Colo-Colo, with the aid of then Conmebol president Luis Valenzuela, it was played between February 11 and March 17. Vasco da Gama won the competition after earning the most points in the round-robin tournament.
  This tournament is seen as a precursor of the Copa Libertadores and is considered, along with the Copa Aldao, as an important stepping stone towards its creation.
context_section_description: Since the early 1910s, Argentine and Uruguayan clubs disputed the Copa Aldao, a tournament played between the national champions of each nation's top national leagues. The great success of this tournament gave birth to the idea of a continental competition.
  In 1929, the head executives of Nacional, Roberto Espil and José Usera Bermúdez, idealized a competition between the national champions of each Conmebol member. After analyzing the geographical distributions and distances, Espil devised a project in 1946 which also included the runners-up of every national league. However, it was Colo-Colo's head executive, Robinson Alvarez Marín, that first put it into practice and hatched the idea in the late 1930s. In 1948, Luis Valenzuela, as president of the confederation, finally set into motion the antecedent of the Copa Libertadores: the "Copa de Campeones".
  Vasco da Gama, led by figures such as Augusto, Barbosa, Danilo, Friaça, Ademir and Chico, came away with the trophy after a deciding 0-0 draw against River Plate on the last round of matches. The Argentine squad had arrived in Santiago with most of players of legendary team La Máquina such as José Manuel Moreno, Ángel Labruna and Félix Loustau, with the addition of rising star Alfredo Di Stéfano replacing Adolfo Pedernera (traded to Huracán).
  Vasco da Gama had already defeated Lítoral and Emelec 1-0 each, thumped Nacional 3-1, trashed Municipal 4-0 and tied 1-1 with the host club Colo-Colo. The competition was as successful financially as it was on the field: the average public attendance per game was 39,549 spectators and the tournament generated a gross of CLP 9,493,483.
  The tournament was also the kickoff to the creation of the European Cup in Europe. French journalist Jacques Ferran became fascinated with the tournament. The UEFA document on the history of the European Cup confirms that Jacques Ferran and Gabriel Hanot, journalists for the French sports newspaper L'Equipe, were the founding fathers of the European Cup. In interviews to the Brazilian sports TV programme Globo Esporte in 2015 and Chilean newspaper El Mercúrio in 2018, Jacques Ferran said that the South American Championship of Champions was the inspiration for the European Cup: "How could Europe, which wanted to be ahead of the rest of the world, not be able to accomplish a competition of the same kind of the South American one? We needed to follow that example."
caption: The River Plate v Vasco da Gama match
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