Mexico at the rendezvous
In addition to the ten South American nations automatically qualified, tradition has it that, since 1993, the host country has hosted two additional selections in order to compose three groups of four teams in the first round. Until this year, Mexico was systematically part of the teams that play in the Copa America, with quite honorable results to its credit. For their first participation, the partners of Hugo Sanchez had caused a sensation by going to the final, where they lost against the Argentina of Gabriel Batistuta. Since then, the Mexicans have passed the hens seven times, in nine participations, with another final in 2001 and three semi-finals in 1997, 1999 and 2007. Since the 2010s, the results of the Mexican selection in the Copa America are however in free fall, with two consecutive eliminations in the group stage, in 2011 and 2015, before experiencing a real humiliation in 2016 for the centenary of the competition, losing 7-0 in the quarter-finals against the future winner Chilean.
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United States, a mixed record
The other great nation of North America, the United States, has participated in the competition four times. If, for their first participation, in 1993, the Americans were ousted in the group stage, Tom Dooley’s teammates reached the semi-finals two years later, before being eliminated by Brazil (1-0, 1995) . A performance that the United States repeated 21 years later, for the centenary of the competition, at home. In 2016, Jûrgen Klinsmann’s men beat Ecuador in the quarterfinals before cracking against Messi’s Argentina (4-0 defeat). The country’s fourth participation dates back to 2007, a bad memory since the Americans had fallen in the group stage, conceding three defeats in three games.
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The others had a hard time
Apart from Mexico and the United States, Costa Rica has already been invited to the Copa América four times, Honduras, Jamaica, Japan, Haiti and Panama. Among these nations, the greatest performance is to be credited to Honduras, semifinalist in 2001 in Colombia, when the country was a last minute guest, taking advantage of the withdrawal of several selections, including Argentina. Apart from this very good performance and a quarter-final played by Costa Rica in 2004, all the courses of these nations stopped in the group stage, these countries do not have a workforce to match the big southern nations. American. In Japan and Qatar to reverse the trend this year in Brazil …
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