Uruguay have won the Copa America 2011 and are the force of South American football to be reckoned with for the next years. OK, Brazil will be in better shape come the Confed Cup 2013 and the World Cup the year after. For now however, it is Uruguay who seem to be the best team in South America.
Argentina, the host nation have a mountain to climb to get the best out of their players or so it appears. This demands at first a good coach. Certainly Maradona was not up for the job. His short comings have been proven at the World Cup 2010 in South Africa. His successor in office Sergio Batista certainly a successful player, could not lift the team out of its trough to new heights and glory. And they had to realize that Lionel Messi is no Messiah and no Maradona who could carry his team through games and more importantly, win them for Argentina.
Brazil will be a team in contention for the World Cup 2014 played in Brazil. As a host nation they will want to make sure they have a successful tournament, i.e. they win. Yet this will be a very difficult task as they will certainly face opposition who have made their homework and will not go down without a fight. This however, is not meant to belittle the efforts of Paraguay and Venezuela who held Brazil to a draw and beat them after extra-time respectively.
Uruguay meanwhile seem to be playing their best football for decades and will be a strong contender for the Confed Cup in 2013 and surely among those to be named favourites for the World Cup in Brazil. This will only happen though, if Diego Forlan can play as superbly as he did in the last two years. In his early thirties, he might not make it to 2013 not to mention 2014 but Uruguay seem to have found his heir in Luis Suarez. The team have a momentum and appear as a coherent squad putting the focus on the team and not individuals, therefore it would be a delight if they could enlighten the coming years of international football with their play. By winning the Copa America, Uruguay confirmed their position from last year’s World Cup where they came in fourth behind three European teams: Spain, Holland and Germany, as the best team from South America.