On July 10th, the Copa America semi-finals kicked off, with Argentina easily defeating the Canadian team 2-0. However, in this edition of the Copa America, Argentina benefited from a favorable group draw, encountering weaker opponents, leading to suspicions that they have been “walked” through to the finals.
The format of this year’s Copa America differs from previous editions, with Group A and Group B forming the top half of the bracket, while Group C and Group D form the bottom half, and teams from the upper and lower halves will not meet before the final.
Looking at FIFA rankings, in this edition of the Copa America, among the top 5 teams in the Americas, only Argentina (ranked 1st in the world) is alone in the top half of the bracket. The other four teams—Brazil (ranked 4th in the world), USA (ranked 11th in the world), Colombia (ranked 12th in the world), and Uruguay (ranked 14th in the world)—are all bunched up in the bottom half. This has led to Argentina standing out alone in the top half, while competition in the bottom half is extraordinarily fierce.
Argentina’s opponents on their way to the finals, facing Canada (ranked 48th in the world), Chile (ranked 40th in the world), and Peru (ranked 31st in the world) in the group stage, as well as Ecuador (ranked 30th in the world) in the quarter-finals and Canada (ranked 48th in the world) again in the semi-finals, are not particularly strong overall. Surprisingly, the strongest opponent Argentina faced before the final was actually Ecuador, ranked just 30th in the world, which is indeed astonishing.