From Wikipedia

The Beautiful Game
Part Six

South American Superpowers

The South American Football Confederation
(Spanish: Confederación Sudamericana de Fútbol;
Portuguese: Confederação Sul-Americana de Futebol),
known by the acronym CONMEBOL or CSF, is the governing body of football (soccer) in most of South America and is one of FIFA's six continental confederations.

CONMEBOL was founded in 1916 under the initiative of Uruguayan Héctor Rivadavia Gómez, but approved by the football associations of Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Uruguay. Over the years, the other football associations in South America joined, with the last being Venezuela in 1952. Guyana, Suriname, and the French overseas department of French Guiana, while geographically in South America, are not part of CONMEBOL. These three territories are part of CONCACAF, mainly due to historical, cultural, and sporting reasons. At ten member nations, CONMEBOL is the smallest FIFA confederation.

CONMEBOL is one of the two dominant confederations in FIFA, along with UEFA. CONMEBOL teams have won nine of the eighteen FIFA World Cup tournaments, while only having hosted the tournament four times. CONMEBOL is also the only confederation in FIFA to have won the World Cup outside its own continent and on every single continent that the tournament has been hosted (mainly due to Brazil), whereas a European team has never been able to win the tournament outside of the European continent. Two of the top seven teams in the FIFA World Rankings are CONMEBOL members (Brazil and Argentina). CONMEBOL is the only confederation in the world to have three teams that have won the FIFA World Cup at least two times each (Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay), and has in its ranks the most successful national team in World Cups (Brazil, with a leading five World Cups). The confederation has also fared well in club tournaments. CONMEBOL clubs have won 22 Intercontinental Cups and three FIFA Club World Cups, one trophy more than UEFA clubs.

Among the tournaments conducted by CONMEBOL are the Copa Libertadores (analogous to the UEFA Champions League), the Copa Sudamericana (analogous to the UEFA Europa League) and the Recopa Sudamericana (analogous to the UEFA Super Cup), for club teams, and Copa América for men's national teams (analogous to the UEFA European Football Championship).