Why Copa América 2024 was a disaster on and off the pitch 🌎 | OneFootball

Copa América 2024 is now in our rearview mirrors as Lionel Messi and Argentina reached the summit once again, collecting their third trophy in as many consecutive major tournaments.

But the excitement of the final night in Miami was dampened due to off-field troubles for the fans. The kick-off for the final was delayed nearly 90 minutes as a result, but in some ways it was the perfect ending to a tournament that will be remembered for all the wrong reasons.

Here we break down what went wrong at the tournament.

Playing surfaces

The issues started at the very first match of the tournament all the way back on June 20 when Argentina defeated Canada in Atlanta, giving the players their first glimpse of the highly-anticipated playing surfaces.

It is no secret that American sports love their artificial turf, but FIFA and its federations require natural grass to be laid down for a major international tournament.

After the opening night showdown, Argentina keeper Emi Martínez did not mince words when it came to describing the quality of the pitch.

“The state of the pitch was a disaster,” Martínez said. “Very bumpy. We must improve in this aspect; otherwise, Copa América will always appear at a lower level than the European Championship.”

Some pitches were laid on top of pre-existing artificial turf, some on top of sand, some on top of concrete. Some were too dry, some too wet. Some were too hard, some were too soft. It didn’t matter where, or what the weather was — the pitches did not help the spectacle.

To compound the grass-related issues, playing in NFL stadiums forced the matches to be played on shorter, narrower pitches. Even when some group games were played in MLS stadiums with regular sized pitches, the tournament officials were forced into painting new lines on the pitch to match the small quarters of the NFL mega-domes.

Many of these tournaments will host matches in 2026 when the United States jointly hosts the FIFA World Cup with Canada and Mexico. These problems will likely rear their heads once again.

Refereeing standards

The games at Copa América are always high-intensity, but this summer the referees seemed unable to keep up.

We saw blatant handballs get ignored, soft penalties given, and far too many games reach their boiling point too early.

In the United States’ final group-stage game against Uruguay, we saw the referee blow his whistle to give a yellow card to an American defender, only to raise his hands for advantage mere seconds later to allow Uruguay to play on. All the while the United States players had stopped playing once the whistle was blown.

That was only one of a handful of bizarre decision we saw on a nearly nightly basis.

Tournament organization

The events at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami were just the cherry on top of disastrous Copa-cake, yet they were by far the biggest stain on the tournament.

As hundreds, if not thousands of fans seemed to storm the stadium without tickets, chaos erupted forcing the stadium security to close the entrance gates. While that may have been policy, it led to dangerous crowd crushes, resulting in unsafe circumstances for thousands of fans.

There has been various finger-pointing when it comes to who takes the blame for the disastrous security operations, but at the end of the day it simply doesn’t matter when the safety of match-going fans is put at risk.

The organizational issues did not start in Miami however, as multiple coaches hit out at their experience at the tournament.

First, the typically reserved Marcelo Bielsa went on a rant after Uruguay’s defeat at the hands of Colombia. A melee broke out between Uruguay players and some fans near the section where the squad’s families were seated.

Bielsa was quick to criticize the seemingly failed structures in place to keep such safety concerns from coming to fruition.

“If you see that there’s a process to keep what happened from happening,” he said. “If you see that if what happened happens anyways, and that there’s supposedly another process — an escape hatch, let’s say — and both things fail, and you see your woman, or your mother, or a baby, being attacked, what would you do? You’d ask whether they’re going to punish the people who defended themselves?”

Canada head-coach Jesse Marsch also weighed in on the tournament organization after his side finished in fourth place.

“They were telling me about weather patterns in different cities and they were telling me about facilities,” Marsch said. “At one point I said, ‘You guys don’t know what you’re talking about.’

“This tournament has not been professional for me. There’s too many gaps in the treatment and the overall experience from a day-to-day perspective.”

Can things change before 2026?

Luckily for us all, there is plenty of time between now and the summer of 2026.

The hope is that FIFA, CONMEBOL, CONCACAF, U.S. Soccer and all of the other powers that be will learn a lesson from this summer.

With the Club World Cup coming to American soil in the summer of 2025, there will be yet another trial run, albeit on a much smaller scale.

The stains of this summer do not rule out 2026 from being a glorious success, but the federations will certainly have a hole to dig themselves out of.