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News > Sport

5 Worst Screw Ups at the Copa America (So Far)

  • Copa America Centenario is being held for the first time in the U.S.

    Copa America Centenario is being held for the first time in the U.S.

Published 8 June 2016
Opinion

From mixing national anthems to culturally shaming countries, the organization of Copa America in the U.S. is already a memorable one.

Copa America, the world's oldest international soccer tournament is receiving considerable criticism from team players, country's soccer's s organizations and fans after a series of awful—and pretty offensive—errors in barely a week since the tournament began.

RELATED:
Everything You Need to Know About the Copa America Centenario

The competition normally takes place every four years and features 10 soccer clubs of the South American Football Confederation, CONMEBOL, and two invited teams from the Confederation of North, Central American and Caribbean Association Football, CONCACAF.

The centennial edition of the Copa America, however, not only includes six CONCACAF teams but is being hosted in the United States—a country not generally known for its love of soccer.

Since the start of the tournament on June 3, a number of mistakes have embarrassed organizers, sponsors and broadcasters alike. Here are the top five, so far:


1. Wrong Flags for Panama, Bolivia

The June 6 matchup between Panama and Bolivia will not go down as a particularly memorable game in terms of play, but it will be remembered for disrespecting the two nations playing.

The giant scoreboard showed an upside down version Bolivian flag, which is red on top, yellow in the middle and green at the bottom. It is unclear as to whether tournament organizers intended to show Ethiopia's flag instead.

The Panama flag was also changed to that of the Netherlands, rather than the original red, white and blue squares.

Oops.


2. Wrong Anthem for Uruguay

At the start of their anticipated game with Mexico, players from La Celeste lined before to sing Uruguay's anthem, as is customary before every international match.

Much to their surprise—as Alvaro Pereira's (R) expression denotes—the anthem played was instead that of South American rival Chile.

Bad memories resurfaced of the last Copa America game vs. Chile and the infamous incident between Gonzalo Jara and Edinson Cavani.


3. Chilean Anthem Remix ft. Pitbull

Chilean fans are used to having 'Pitbull' sing the country's national anthem before a game. That is, if it involves Inter Milan star Gary 'Pitbull' Medel, and not the Cuban-American pop star.

In what Uruguay fans call a karma-like moment, Chile's own anthem was interrupted and replaced for moments by a recorded song by non-soccer player Pitbull during their match against Argentina.

Chilean players continued to sing their anthem even though the "El Taxi" singer/ rapper could be heard muttering his usual brand of sexual innuendos in the background.


4. Colombia vs. Columbia

It's a common mistake and pet peeve of many, many South Americans.

In their snazzy new Copa America advertising campaign, sports giant Adidas misspelled the name of a small, relatively unknown South American country by the name of Columbia.

The Adidas ad, featuring Real Madrid superstar James Rodriguez, has the country's name written "Columbia" in white, bold letters.

Unconfirmed reports say all of Adidas' copy editors were fired shortly after.


5. Strike 2 on Uruguay: Cultural Shaming

Few listicles about embarrasing errors are complete without a contribution from Fox News.

At the beginning of each match, the broadcaster puts up a small introduction to each team about to play to educate the public about a country they probably know little about. Fair enough.

Uruguay, a two time World Cup and 15-time Copa America champ, was described as a country whose most notable feature is that houses don't have street numbers (which is actually not true, but who cares, right?).

To rub salt in the wounds, this also happened before Uruguay's match against Mexico, which the Charruas lost 3-1.

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