South American Championship of Champions
| Campeonato Sudamericano de Campeones Campeonato Sul-Americano de Campeões |
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|---|---|
The Campeonato Sudamericano de Campeones trophy on display.
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| Tournament details | |
| Host country |  |
| City | Santiago |
| Dates | Feb 11 – Mar 17, 1948 |
| Teams | 7 (from 1 confederation) |
| Final positions | |
| Champions |
 Vasco da Gama
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| Runners-up |
 River Plate
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| Tournament statistics | |
| Matches played | 21 |
| Goals scored | 76 (3.62 per match) |
| Attendance | 830,539 (39,549 per match) |
The South American Championship of Champions (Spanish: Campeonato Sudamericano de Campeones,Portuguese: Campeonato Sul-Americano de Campeões) was a football competition played in Santiago, Chile in 1948 and the first continental-wide tournament in the history of the sport, hosted and organized by Chilean club Colo-Colo, It was played between February 11 and March 17. Vasco da Gama won the competition after earning the most points in the round-robin tournament. This tournament is seen as a precursor of the Copa Libertadores and is considered, along with the Copa Río de La Plata, as an important stepping stone towards the creation of the South American club tournament.
Since the early 1910s, Argentine and Uruguayan clubs disputed the Copa Río de La Plata, a tournament played between the national champions of each nation's top national leagues. The great success of this tournament gave birth to the idea of a continental competition.
In 1929, the head executives of Nacional, Roberto Espil y José Usera Bermúdez, idealized a competition between the national champions of each Conmebol member. After analyzing the geographical distributions and distances, Espil devised a project in 1946 which also included the runners-up of every national league. However, it was Colo-Colo's head executive, Don Robinson Alvarez Marín, that first put it into practice and hatched the idea in the late 1930s. In 1948, Don Luis Valenzuela, as president of the confederation, finally set into motion the antecedent of the Copa Libertadores: the Copa de Campeones.
Vasco da Gama, led by figures such as Augusto, Barbosa, Danilo, Friaça, Ademir and Chico, came away with the trophy after a deciding 0-0 draw against River Plate on the last round of matches. Vasco da Gama had already defeated Lítoral and Emelec 1-0 each, thumped Nacional 3-1, trashed Municipal 4-0 and tied 1-1 with the host club Colo-Colo. The competition was as successful financially as it was on the field: the average public attendance per game was 39,549 spectators and the tournament generated a gross of CLP 9,493,483.
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