Copa América 2015 Seedings: See Who's In And Who's Out

The 12 Central and South America countries that will compete in the 2015 Copa América have been selected. On Monday, the South American Football Confederation met with the Football Federation of Chile, to create the groups for which the teams will be sorted. Essentially the groups are tiered based off of their world rankings. The system was designed by CONMEBOL and has Argentina, Brazil and host nation, Chile as the top 3 seeds.

In the second group, Colombia, Uruguay and Mexico round out what CONMEBOL believes to be the next three best teams, followed by Ecuador, Peru and Paraguay in group three and Venezuela, Bolivia and Jamaica in group four. On Monday, November 24^th, CONMEBOL will host a live draw that will realign the teams into their official groups for the tournament. Similar to World Cup rules, the top two teams in each group will advance to the knockout rounds.

The 2015 Copa América tournament, also known globally as the 2015 Campeonato Sudamericano Copa América will be the 44^th edition of the tournament that is the oldest international soccer tournament in the world. The tournament was first held in 1916 and featured only Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Uruguay. Ironically, almost 100 years later, those countries are still the top 4 ranked countries in the tournament and the favorites to reach the final four again next year. Uruguay, led by Luis Suarez, won the last tournament in 2011 and Suarez was named the Best Player of the tournament.

Suarez will be noticeably absent from this year’s tournament as he was notably banned for nine international matches after biting Italian defender, Giorgio Chiellini, in the 2014 World Cup in Brazil. The nine match ban will mean that Suarez will miss the entirety of the 2015 Copa América tournament, severely hurting Uruguay’s chances of repeating as champions. The winner of the tournament will earn the right to compete in the 2017 FIFA Confederations Cup hosted in Russia.