MIAMI: The two football confederations in the Americas are reportedly considering creating a new tournament grouping together the top national teams from South America’s CONMEBOL and central/north America’s CONCACAF.

The Bloomberg news agency claimed that CONCACAF could switch its Gold Cup from a two four-year staging, bringing it in line with other major continental tournaments such as the European Championship and the Copa America.

This would create room for a new quadrennial tournament that would also include teams from South America, potentially as early as 2020.

CONCACAF president Victor Montagliani has requested an evaluation of all the competitions it stages, including the Gold Cup, the organisation said in a statement.

CONMEBOL president Alejandro Dominguez has embarked on a strategy of closer relations between the two organisations for both financial and political reasons. For example, CONMEBOL will need support from elsewhere if Uruguay and Argentina are serious about wanting to win host rights to the centenary 2030 World Cup.

The 2016 Copa America Centenario – the centennial edition of the event – was staged in the United States. As well as all 10 teams from CONMEBOL six CONCACAF nations competed in a tournament won by Chile.

Almost 1.5 million fans attended the 32 games at last year’s tournament, with matches attracting an average attendance of 46,000. This made the Centenario the most attended Copa America in the tournament’s history.

Last week CONCACAF selected Lagardère Sport to market global media rights for the 2017 and 2019 editions of the Gold Cup.

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