Copa Libertadores, A History

By: Andrea | February 10th, 2009

Bofo gets spat at Hopefully the title didn’t confuse you that this was going to be a post about the history of Copa Libertadores. It’s more of how Chivas have done in the tournament.

1998: This was the first year we participated in the tournament. In pre-group stages we had to battle it against Venezuelan teams Atletico Zulia and Caracas. Our long-hated rival America was also put into the group. Both Mexican teams managed to make it out into the group stages to join Brazilian teams Germio and Vasco De Gama. Unfortunately, we only won 2 games in the group stage and lost 4, eliminating us from the tournament.

2005: We came back for the tournament in 2005. During this year we made it to the quarters by beating out Pachuca, only to meet Boca Jrs. next. Of course, everyone remembers those games. The ones where we won 4-0 at home and handed Boca a devastating loss. The Argentinians didn’t seem to like that very much and the famous incident at the Bombonera happened. You know the spitting from the Argentinean coach and Bofo being escorted out by police? Yeah, that one. We fell to Paranense in the semi’s but Bravo came away as one of the leading scorers in the tournament with 6 goals.

2006: We did well in 2006 coming in 2nd in group A with 12 points. We met Santa Fe of Columbia in the round of 16, Velez Sarsfield in the quarters, but were beaten 4-0 on aggregate by Sao Paulo.

2008: In 2008 we went directly to the group stages and came up against Santos of Brazil, San Jose of Bolivia, and Caucuta Deportivo of Columbia. We didn’t make it farther than the group stages and only collected enough points to get 3rd place in the group.

2009: We got into the group stages of the 2009 edition by winning the InterLiga. This year we have Lanus of Argentina, Everton of Chile, and Caracas of Venezuela.

Our first game is against Lanus of Argentina on Wednesday February 11th. Traditionally as you can see we’ve done really well against Argentinian teams so let’s hope that that tradition continues. I’m predicting a 3-1 win for Chivas.