Copa Sudamericana

The Copa Bridgestone Sudamericana (Portuguese: Copa Bridgestone Sul-Americana ), known simply as the Copa Sudamericana (Portuguese: Copa Sul-Americana), is an annual international club football competition organized by the CONMEBOL since 2002. It is the second most prestigious club competition in South American football. CONCACAF clubs were invited between 2004 and 2008. The Copa Sudamerican began in 2002, replacing the separate competitions Copa Merconorte and Copa Mercosur by a single competition. Since its introduction, the competition has been a pure elimination tournament with the number of rounds and teams varying from year to year.

The Copa Sudamericana is considered a merger of defunct tournaments such as the Copa CONMEBOL, Copa Mercosur and Copa Merconorte. In the present format, the tournament consists of seven stages, with the first stage taking place in early August. The sixteen surviving teams from the first stage contest eight entries into the final four stages, as well as the six Argentine and eight Brazilian clubs that, nationally, dispute three and four slots, respectively. The fifteen second stage winners enter the final four stages along with the defending champions, better known as the knockout stages, which ends with the finals anywhere between November and December. The winner of the Copa Sudamericana becomes eligible to play in the Recopa Sudamericana. They also gain entry onto the next edition of the Copa Libertadores, South America's premier club competition. They also contest the Suruga Bank Championship.

The reigning champion of the competition is Chilean club Universidad de Chile, after beating LDU Quito 4-0 on aggregate. Argentine club Boca Juniors is the most successful club in the cup history, having won the tournament twice. Argentine clubs have accumulated the most amount of victories with 5 wins while containing the largest number of different winning teams, with a total of four clubs having won the title. The cup has been won by nine different clubs and won consecutively once, most recently by Boca Juniors in 2005.