I imagine there are plenty of fans in Australia suffering from post-tournament depression – the empty feeling when the party comes to an end.

Fear not – help is at hand. If you can just hang on for a few months there is another tournament coming along with tradition and contemporary importance beyond the dreams of the Asian Federation – the Copa America 2015, which takes place in Chile between June 11th and July 4th.

These days the Copa is a little bit different from other continental competitions – principally because South America only has ten nations. For the last 20 years, two more teams from outside are invited – Japan has even taken part in the past. This time, it is Mexico and Jamaica.

The tournament has no qualifying games – which means that unlike, say, the European Championships, the Copa does not bring a cycle to an end. Rather, it starts a new one. There have been no competitive matches in South America since the World Cup. Only three of the ten countries have retained their coaches. The other seven will all play their first competitive matches under their new coach in the Copa – and for many, the objective of the exercise is to prepare a team for the next set of World Cup qualifiers, which will get underway in October.

This does not devalue the Copa. Winning the trophy is a big morale boost. Brazil would love to claim it to put the World Cup nightmare behind it. Argentina, which last won the tournament in 1993, is desperate for a senior title. And then there is the case of the host. For Chile, the tournament is no mere reconnaissance mission. The pressure is on it to win – and not solely because it is in front of its own fans, or because by popular consensus it has the best side in its history.

Most of the tournaments (37 out of 43) have been won by the traditional big three, Uruguay, Argentina and Brazil. The remaining six have been divided between Peru and Paraguay (two each) and Bolivia and Colombia (one apiece). It is no surprise that Ecuador and Venezuela have never won – they have made huge strides in recent years, but are the least traditional footballing nations on the continent. But Chile? The red shirts have been present at all but seven versions of the competition. They are one of the founding members of the Copa, one of the four nations which disputed the first tournament, all the way back in 1916. They have still never won it – 99 years later.

They have a chance to put that right this year – and another opportunity next. Because in 2016, the South American Federation is celebrating the centenary of its flagship competition with an extra version – which will not be held in South America. Instead, it is trying to fulfil its ambition to expand northwards and get its hands on some US dollars. The Centenary Copa America will take place in the United States, with the ten South American nations joined by six from Concacaf.

This comes across as a somewhat cynical sell out of a momentous occasion. A hundred years of the Copa America is an occasion that deserves to be marked. In the early days, before the Wall Street crash and its political consequences, the Copa was held almost every year. It was a huge driver of playing standards – indeed, it indirectly led to the World Cup. When Uruguay came to contest the Paris Olympics in 1924 few in Europe had heard of it. But it had played seven Copas, and won four of them. It was talented and experienced and it destroyed team after team on its way to the gold medal, playing a brand of football far superior and more aesthetically pleasing than anything that had been seen up to that point. Four years later, with two more Copas and one more title under its belt, it did it again – this time beating Argentina in the final.

The cry went out - 'we need a competition where these South Americans (amateurs at the time) can play against the English professionals, so we can find out who really is best.' And so the World Cup was born.

The birth of the Copa, then, is something that should be commemorated – though preferably in South America. Apart from the location, though, there is another problem with next year's competition; World Cup 2014, Copa America 2015, Centenary Copa 2016 – that is three consecutive years without a full holiday for some of the continent's stars (indeed, it could be four, or even five years for those Brazilians and Uruguayans who played in the 2013 Confederations Cup and the London Olympics).

The probability is that the big names will miss out on the Centenary competition – Neymar, for example, has already indicated that he would prefer to play for Brazil in the Rio Olympics. The 2015 Copa in Chile, as we have seen, is an important kick-start to the new competitive cycle, a chance to whip a team into shape for the World Cup qualifiers.

The 2016 Centenary Copa happens in the middle of those qualifiers, and will surely be devalued as a result. Big name players who do turn up will be risking burn out – recent World Cups have firmly underlined the point that too many demands are being made on the stars, many of whom appear to be out of gas at the end of the season. Tournaments are wonderful – but you can have too much of a good thing.

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