Uruguayan victories in Copa America are not linked to the past as you say. They are spreaded quite evenly. I fact Uruguay won this tournament last time in 1995 and was vice-champion in the next I think. In fact in the last 10 years Uruguay has been closer to this cup than Argentina.

You're right, it is very close between Argentina and Uruguay. It's mostly a judgement call on my part (because the quality of a team is somewhat more complicated than number of titles), but here is the data I have to work with:

(Seperated roughly into "early era" and "modern era")

             

Uruguay: Copa America Titles: 1950 or earlier: 8 After 1950: 6 World Cup Titles: 1950 or earlier: 2 After 1950: 0

Argentina Copa America Titles: 1950 or earlier: 9 After 1950: 5 World Cup Titles: 1950 or earlier: 0 After 1950: 2

If you consider only recent history, however, it is a bit more clear of a spread, but not much.

Last 20 years

Uruguay: 2 CA 0 WC

Argentina: 2 CA 1 WC 1 WC runner-up

Good info. I disagree in the titles thing. To win a tournament you always must be good: Greece, Uruguay, Argentina or Brazil. You may not like the kind of football you see but winning a title is not ever unrelated with quality. If you are the best then you win, always. This is true only if referees don't have any serious mistake of course (makes me think of the last WC).
So after 1950 Uruguay has been better than Argentina in Copa America while Argentina was better in the WC.

I read again what you wrote and in fact we are probably agreeing in everything. Sorry! I guess I was talking with myself (god I need my own blog)

You should get your own blog! Not because I have any problem with you commenting here, but I want more people on JoeUser who are interested in the beautiful game.

I think titles are of course the most important indicator of the quality of a team, but I DO think it is a bit more complicated than that. Do you really feel that Greece is the best team in Europe right now? They of course have every right to make that claim, but if you really think about it, I would say Portugal, as well as a number of other teams are "better" teams, they just came up short. Another example is Spain. They ARE definitely one of the top ten teams in the world, but how many titles do they have to back that up? I would have no problem saying Spain is better than Russia even though their success in Euro Cup and World Cup are pretty much the same.

The problem is that when people talk about the quality of a team they usualy can't avoid thinking about past victories (sometimes unconsciously). That's why we think Portugal is better than Greece. Portugal has more tradition, history. But the fact is that NOW, on the short term, Greece is best and they proved that. Can be hard to accept but it's the true. They may (probably) be back to be a meddium class team after some months.

Also people tend to think a team with some stars should always be better than a well balanced and tuned team with no stars.

Marketing or media exposure also has it's fair part. If you have 2 teams, X and Y, of the same quality but you can watch games and players from only X then you'll probably think it's the better team because we tend to forget or ignore what we don't see, Y.

I think I'm to lazy an impatient for my own blog. I bookmarked yours!