The CONMEBOL Libertadores, also known as the Copa Libertadores de América is an annual international club football competition organized by Conmebol since 1960. It is the highest level of competition in South American club football. The tournament is named after the Spanish and Portuguese for liberators, the leaders of the Latin Wars of Independence, so a literal translation of its former name into English is "America's Liberators Cup".
The competition has had several formats over its lifetime. Initially, only the champions of the South American leagues participated. In 1966, the runners-up of the South American leagues began to join. In 1998, Mexican teams were invited to compete and contested regularly from 2000 until 2016. In 2000 the tournament was expanded from 20 to 32 teams.
Today at least four clubs per country compete in the tournament, with Argentina and Brazil having the most representatives (six and seven clubs, respectively). A group stage has always been used but the number of teams per group has varied.
In the present format, the tournament consists of eight stages, with the first stage taking place in late January. The four surviving teams from the first three stages join 28 teams in the group stage, which consists of eight groups of four teams each. The eight group winners and eight runners-up enter the knockout stages, which end with the final in November. The winner of the Copa Libertadores becomes eligible to play in the FIFA World Club Cup and the Recopa Sudamericana.
Bolivia and Venezuela are the only countries never to reach a final. Beyond them, Peru (and Mexico, in their invitational period) are the only ones never to win a final.
Independiente of Argentina is the most successful club in the cup's history, having won the tournament seven times. Boca Juniors has won it 6 times and Runners-up 5, Penarol 5 and 5.
Argentine clubs have accumulated the most victories with 25 wins, while Brazil has the largest number of winning teams, with 10 clubs having won the title. The cup has been won by 25 clubs, 15 of them more than once, and seven clubs have won two years in a row.
The clashes for the Copa Aldao between the champions of Argentina and Uruguay kindled the idea of continental competition in the 1930s. In 1948, the South American Championship of Champions, (Spanish: Campeonato Sudamericano de Campeones), the most direct precursor to the Copa Libertadores, was played and organized by the Chilean club Colo-Colo after years of planning and organization. Held in Santiago, it brought together the champions of each nation's top national leagues. The tournament was won by Vasco Das Gama of Brazil. The 1948 South American tournament began, in continent-wide reach, the "champions cup" model, resulting in the creation of the European Cup in 1955, as confirmed by Jacque Ferran (one of the "founding fathers" of the European Cup), in a 2015 interview with a Brazilian TV sports programme.
In 1958, the basis and format of the competition were created by Penarol's board leaders. On October 8, 1958, Joao Havelange announced, at a UEFA meeting he attended as an invitee, the creation of Copa de Campeones de America (American Champions Cup, renamed in 1965 as Copa Libertadores), as a South American equivalent of the European Cup (as it was then known), so that the champion clubs of both continental confederations could decide "the best club team of the world" in the Intercontinental Cup. On March 5, 1959, at the 24th South American Congress held in Buenos Aires, the competition was ratified by the International Affairs Committee. In 1965, it was named in honor of the heroes of South American Liberation, such as Simon Bolivar, Bernado O'Higgins (yes true), and Jose Gervasio Artigas, among others.
