Oye fútbol fanáticos: we’re heading into the last two CONMEBOL World Cup qualifying Matchdays of the year! In case you haven’t already been following with bated breath, or in case the only thing you know about the World Cup are the lyrics to Waka Waka, here’s a brief explanation of how the qualifiers work – because it’s actually a pretty arduous process.
In order to reduce approximately 200 teams down to the final 32, the world is split into six FIFA continental zones: Africa, Asia, North and Central America and Caribbean, South America, Oceania, and Europe. Each zone holds qualifying tournaments organized by their respective confederations in order to fill the slots FIFA has allotted them, before going on to intercontinental matches.
The South American Zone, run by a Confederation known en español as CONMEBOL, sees nine national teams competing for 4 places in the finals. All CONMEBOL national teams play against each other twice on a home-and-away basis – except Brazil, which is guaranteed a slot as host country – and the last matches of 2012 are taking place this month on October 12 and October 16 (before they resume again in March of 2013).
Now that we’ve gotten that stuff out of they way, on to the important business: Where to Watch. It’s not hard to find a list of good soccer bars in New York – in fact, we wrote about several here. However, it’s harder to pinpoint the perfect place to watch if you’re un hincha peruano, or if you want to scream “Vamos los pibes!” con los argentinos. Remezcla to the rescue – below find our curated list of the perfect spot to root for your team. Predictably, they’re pretty much all in Queens because let’s face it, so are the bulk of NYC’s latinoamericanos. Without further ado:
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