Copa Peru: The Tournament of Madness
Picture this: a group of friends has just finished their regular weekly 8-a-side game and is hanging out, drinking beers. Amid the banter and the satisfaction from how the match turned out, someone throws out an idea: “Why don’t we start a real team? We do pretty well in the tournaments we participate in. Who knows, maybe one day we’ll play in the big leagues.” Some laugh, others throw peanuts at him, but in the end, thanks to the help of alcohol, everyone agrees. “Why not? It would be fun.”
Soon, the team is founded and joins the lowest local leagues. Just one year later, this group of complete amateurs takes the field at the ‘Alejandro Villanueva’ stadium, ready to face the country’s reigning champion, Alianza Lima, in a top-division match! The story is fantastic, almost absurdly extreme, but as crazy as it sounds, it is technically possible. It could happen. How? Welcome to the magical world of Copa Peru.
The Copa Peru sounds and looks like a cup competition, but it’s not. It has a format that closely resembles a classic league, but it’s not that either. The Copa Peru is something else, something unique, something that doesn’t fit into a single word, possibly not even into a single sentence. The Copa Peru is madness, in a continent that has been in an unofficial competition for decades to come up with and implement the best, the biggest, the most extreme ideas.
Just the opening statement of its description is enough to convince you: no one knows how many teams participate in Copa Peru. Many have tried to count them over the years. Few have succeeded. No one can guarantee their findings were correct. A few years ago, a brave Twitter user with a lot of free time counted the teams for that year and found a bit over 22.000! Twenty-two thousand. Another person, in a different year, counted them at 25.000 and some change. But like age, the number of teams doesn’t really matter. It’s just a number. What matters is the madness. And of that, there’s plenty.
In Copa Peru, everyone participates. No exaggeration. Anyone who wants to can create a team before the tournament starts, giving it any name imaginable (“Team Juan RománRiquelme,” “Team Ho Chi Minh,” “The Cat-Eaters,” whatever they want). One of the favorite pastimes of some eccentric Peruvians is to search every year for the funniest names. Once registered with the Peruvian Football Federation, the team is ready to compete in the world’s largest football marathon. The only teams excluded are those already playing in the top two divisions of Peru, as they are the ultimate targets for everyone else. The runner-up of the tournament automatically earns promotion to the country’s second division. And yes, as you might have already guessed, the winner of the tournament gains direct promotion to the PrimeraDivisión! If the question is “Is it absurd?” the answer is “It’s Latin American!”
It doesn’t matter how low you start, whether your team’s roster consists of just 14 players, if your pitch is a field in some village high in the Andes, if your budget is smaller than that of a Greek family in 2022, or if the jerseys are washed by the captain’s mom in a basin. If, by some magical means, your team wins its games on the field (or even off it), you could, in less than 12 months, find yourself playing in the top division, in large stadiums, against international footballers!
The tournament kicks off every year in February at the neighborhood level and essentially has five stages. During the first three months, the “Neighborhood Phase” serves as the initial sorting period, where city teams play against each other. Since each city or area has a different number of teams due to varying populations, some of these tournaments (especially in large cities) have additional divisions and knockout rounds, making it easy to lose track if someone tries to record all the games. In June and July, the teams that advanced move on to the “Provincial Phase,” where they face teams from nearby areas.
In the third phase, which lasts until the end of summer, the tournament expands further, and teams compete against the other regional winners. Since the country is divided into 25 regions, the top two teams from each regional tournament qualify for the “National Phase.” At this point, things get serious, as the competition gains nationwide attention. It’s common to read news at this stage about teams suddenly finding new sponsors and announcing five, ten, or even fifteen new signings in a single day in preparation for the National Phase! Unlike the previous knockout phases, this stage follows a league format. If you want to call it that. But you might not.
Each of the 50 teams plays six matches in September and October—three at home and three away. Questions like how the number six was chosen, how opponents are determined, and how we manage to keep a straight face are unlikely to be answered. All the results are compiled into a single league table, and at the end of these six bizarre rounds, the top 32 teams advance to a classic knockout phase. After the rounds of 32, 16, and 8, the four teams that reach the semifinals proceed to the fifth and final phase, known as “La Finalísima.”
Contrary to what you might expect (which shouldn’t surprise you if you’ve made it this far—kudos to you), “La Finalísima” isn’t composed of two semifinals and a final. Instead, it’s a mini-league where all teams play against each other in a neutral venue. The second-place team earns promotion to the second division, while the first-place team takes the trophy and prepares to face the country’s top teams in the following season.
Throughout this chaotic system, madness reigns, with all the positives and negatives that such a situation brings. During the initial months, when amateurism reaches its peak, the blunders are countless, and any control by the organizers is almost nonexistent. The stories that emerge from the thousands of games across the country make it hard to believe that the tournament winner might be competing for the Peruvian championship the next year.
There are matches that have been halted because the field was overrun by cows or turned into a makeshift restroom by other animals. In the early stages of the tournament, games have been held out of sheer necessity on improvised pitches in village squares, right next to cars and shops. There have been farcical scenes with accusations of match-fixing between teammates happening right in front of cameras. Some pitches are located at extreme altitudes in the Andes, where visiting players are gasping for air within minutes. For example, in this year’s “National Stage,” 21 teams are based at altitudes equivalent to Mount Olympus, with one team’s home ground sitting at 4,330 meters! There are cases where a team chases after a referee, who escapes by jumping over fences. There are also instances where both teams chase after the referee, where one team chases the other team, and where a team leaves the pitch in a police bus. There are even matches that didn’t start on time because the referee was too drunk to stand.
The tournament is notorious for its rough play, reminiscent of local derby matches. You’ll find countless bone-crunching tackles, defenders who seem to find it easier and more reasonable to target the legs (or even the head) of an opponent rather than the ball, and pitches that resemble a well-trodden minefield. This is why the tournament is often referred to as “El Fútbol Macho,” or “Manly Football.” Copa Perú offers a wild opportunity to rise from the depths to the pinnacle of the country’s football scene in just a few months. But to achieve this, suffering is guaranteed.
Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of all this concentrated eccentricity is that many times, the teams that emerge from the tournament aren’t just punching bags in the top division. One of the most extreme examples is DeportivoBinacional, a team founded in late 2010. In 2017, they won the Copa Perú, and within the next three years, they celebrated a national championship and played in both the Copa Sudamericana and the Copa Libertadores! This is a team that only became a professional club in 2018, thanks to Copa Perú. Besides the teams that become famous almost overnight, the tournament also uncovers new, capable coaches and football talents who eventually play for the national team. Under different circumstances, these players might have spent years stuck at the local level, or worse, they might never have been discovered at all.
As expected, such a peculiar endeavor has its share of enthusiasts, who relish this blend of eccentricity, comedy, and (let’s call it) romanticism. But it also has its detractors, who focus mainly on the excesses that occur in the early stages (whether it’s violence or fixed matches), using the potential for future fame and the dream of a spot in the top division as an excuse. However, this will be the last season where the winner automatically secures a ticket to the PrimeraDivisión. Starting from 2023, the title will come with promotion to the second division instead, making the transition from fully amateur to fully professional a bit more reasonable and gradual. Even so, the dream remains alive for countless amateur Peruvians who spend their weekends chasing a ball. The shortcut to the professional leagues is still open. All they have to do is stand out from the rest.
From the other 25,000 teams.
