Brazilian soccer: a guide

Meanwhile, in August, the South American Cup begins, involving eight or nine of the Series A teams who qualified the prior year. They somehow find the time to fly around to Bolivia and Venezuela playing these games while they also participate in the Brazilian Championship. Sounds tiring for the players, and lucrative for the teams.

Back to Series A. Whomever ends up in first place in December is the winner, no playoffs necessary. That national champion and the next three teams automatically qualify for the following year’s Libertadores Cup. The teams in fifth through 12th place qualify for the South American Cup. That’s it.

Just kidding! That’s not it. Remember that the Brazil Cup that goes on concurrent with the state season and the Libertadores Cup? It involves 64 Brazilian teams: 10 top-ranked teams, plus two each from the 26 Brazilian states and the Federal District. (Note that if any of those teams are already in the concurrent Libertadores Cup, they are replaced, since you can’t be in both.) The winner of the Brazil Cup, decided in June, claims the first of five Brazilian berths in the following year’s Libertadores Cup (and thus no team can win the Brazil Cup in two consecutive years).

Stick with me: If the Brazil Cup champion in June lands in the top four spots of the Series A national championship in December, they double-qualify for Libertadores. So their second spot goes to the fifth place team. That team, thus, can’t go to the South American Cup, so the 13th place team goes instead. And if the Brazil Cup champ lands in fifth through 12th place, the 13th place team replaces it in the South American Cup, since no team can play in both Libertadores and the South American Cup.

[Advanced lesson: Since both the Libertadores and South American Cup champions automatically qualify for the tournament the next year, it is theoretically possible that if Brazilian teams win one or both, the team placing sixth in the Brazilian Championship could also make Libertadores and the 14th and even 15th place teams could also make the South American Cup. Take two aspirin and read this again in the morning.]

Ah yes, we skipped a very important part: The bottom four teams, 17th place through 20th, in Series A through C, get knocked down to the next-lowest series the following year, replaced by the top four teams in A, B and C.

Finally, there is also a club world championship. The winner of Libertadores gets the South American spot in the FIFA Club World Cup, which this December will take place in the United Arab Emirates. The last Brazilian club to claim the world championship was Inter, from Porto Alegre, which won in 2006 in Tokyo.

And all this has nothing to do with the real World Cup, which is more important than all of the rest put together.

May I suggest a samba lesson?

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Where soccer is dangerous business

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