The 2012 Copa Libertadores de América (officially the 2012 Copa Santander Libertadores for sponsorship reasons) was the 53rd edition of the

Copa Libertadores de América The CONMEBOL Libertadores, also known as Copa Libertadores de América (), is an annual continental club football competition organized by CONMEBOL since 1960. It is the highest level of competition in South American club football. The tourname ...

South America South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a considerably smaller portion in the Northern Hemisphere. It can also be described as the southern Subregion#Americas, subregion o ...

's premier international club

football Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kick (football), kicking a football (ball), ball to score a goal (sports), goal. Unqualified, football (word), the word ''football'' generally means the form of football t ...

tournament organized by

CONMEBOL CONMEBOL ( ) or CSF (; ; ), is the continental governing body of football in South America and it is one of FIFA's six continental confederations. The oldest continental confederation in the world, its headquarters are located in Luque, Parag ...

. It ran from January 24 to July 4, 2012. Santos were the defending champions, but lost to

Corinthians The First Epistle to the Corinthians () is one of the Pauline epistles, part of the New Testament of the Christian Bible. The epistle is attributed to Paul the Apostle and a co-author, Sosthenes, and is addressed to the Christian church in C ...

in the semifinals.

São Paulo São Paulo (; ; Portuguese for 'Paul the Apostle, Saint Paul') is the capital of the São Paulo (state), state of São Paulo, as well as the List of cities in Brazil by population, most populous city in Brazil, the List of largest cities in the ...

-based club

won the competition, with an undefeated campaign, after defeating six-time champion

Boca Juniors Club Atlético Boca Juniors () is an Argentine professional sports club based in La Boca, a neighbourhood of Buenos Aires. The club is best known for its men's professional Association football, football team which, since its promotion in 1913 ...

the finals ''The Finals'' is a free-to-play first-person shooter, developed and published by Embark Studios. The game focuses on team-based matches on maps with a destructible environment, where players (who are divided into a number of distinct classes) ...

. It is Corinthians' first Libertadores title. By winning the competition, Corinthians won the right to play in the 2012 FIFA Club World Cup and the 2013 Recopa Sudamericana.

Qualified teams

Draw

The draw of the tournament was held on November 25, 2011, at 15:00 UTC−03:00, in

Luque Luque () is a city in Central Department of Paraguay, part of the Gran Asunción metropolitan area. Both 1635 and 1750 have been recorded as dates of its founding. It was temporarily the capital of Paraguay in 1868 during the Paraguayan War ...

Paraguay Paraguay, officially the Republic of Paraguay, is a landlocked country in South America. It is bordered by Argentina to the Argentina–Paraguay border, south and southwest, Brazil to the Brazil–Paraguay border, east and northeast, and Boli ...

. For the first stage, each of the six ties contains one team from each pot. For the second stage, each of the eight groups contains one team from each pot. Teams from the same association in Pots 1 and 3 cannot be placed in the same group. However, a first stage winner may be drawn with a team from the same association in the second stage. As per agreement when deciding the seeding for the 2011 Copa Libertadores, Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay all had their berth 1 teams be seeded teams for 2012 instead of the berth 1 teams from Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela for 2011. ^† Teams had not yet fully qualified to the specific berth when the draw took place.

Schedule

All dates listed are Wednesdays, but matches may be played on the day before (Tuesdays) and after (Thursdays) as well.

First stage

The First Stage, played in home-and-away two-legged format, began on January 24 and ended on February 2. ''Team 1'' played the second leg at home.

Second stage

The second stage, played in home-and-away round-robin format, began on February 7 and ended on April 19. The top two teams from each group advanced to the round of 16.

Group 1

Group 2

Group 3

Group 4

Group 5

Group 6

Group 7

Group 8

Knockout stages

The last four stages of the tournament (round of 16, quarterfinals, semifinals, and finals), played in home-and-away two-legged format, form a

single-elimination tournament A single-elimination knockout, or sudden-death tournament is a type of elimination tournament where the loser of a match-up is immediately eliminated from the tournament. Each winner will play another in the next round, until the final match-up, ...

, contested by the sixteen teams which advance from the Second Stage. In each tie, the team with the higher seed will play at home in the second leg.

Seeding

The 16 qualified teams are seeded in the knockout stages according to their results in the second stage, with the group winners seeded 1–8, and the group runners-up seeded 9–16. The teams were ranked by: 1. Points (Pts); 2. Goal difference (GD); 3. Goals scored (GF); 4. Away goals (AG); 5. Drawing of lots.

Bracket

Round of 16

The Round of 16 began on April 25 and ended on May 10. ''Team 1'' played the second leg at home.

Quarter-finals

The Quarter-finals began on May 16 and ended on May 24. ''Team 1'' played the second leg at home.

Semi-finals

The Semifinals began on June 13 and ended on June 21. ''Team 1'' played the second leg at home.

Finals

The Finals were played over two legs, with the higher-seeded team playing the second leg at home. If the teams were tied on

points A point is a small dot or the sharp tip of something. Point or points may refer to: Mathematics * Point (geometry), an entity that has a location in space or on a plane, but has no extent; more generally, an element of some abstract topologica ...

and

goal difference Goal difference, goal differential or points difference is a form of tiebreaker used to rank sport teams which finish on equal points in a league competition. Either "goal difference" or "points difference" is used, depending on whether matches ar ...

at the end of regulation in the second leg, the

away goals rule The away goals rule is a method of tiebreaking in association football and other sports when teams play each other twice, once at each team's home ground. Under the away goals rule, if the total goals scored by each team are equal, the team that ...

would not be applied and 30 minutes of

extra time Overtime (OT) or extra time (ET) is an additional period of play to bring a game to a decision and avoid declaring the match a tie or draw where the scores are the same. In some sports, this extra period is played only if the game is required t ...

would be played. If still tied after extra time, the title would be decided by

penalty shootout The penalty shootout is a method of determining a winner in sports matches that would have otherwise been drawn or tied. The rules for penalty shootouts vary between sports and even different competitions; however, the usual form is similar to pe ...

. ---- ''Corinthians won on points 3–1.''

Top goalscorers

Awards

Player of the week

Fair play award

The

Samsung Samsung Group (; stylised as SΛMSUNG) is a South Korean Multinational corporation, multinational manufacturing Conglomerate (company), conglomerate headquartered in the Samsung Town office complex in Seoul. The group consists of numerous a ...

Fair Play Trophy was awarded to Brazilian club

Notes

Brazilian coach

Ricardo Ferretti Ricardo Ferretti de Oliveira (born 22 February 1954), also known as Tuca, is a Brazilian-Mexican professional football manager and former player who currently works for ESPN Deportes and ESPN Mexico as an analyst. As a player, Ferretti was ...

sent a team of substitutes of

Tigres UANL Club Tigres de la Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León, abbreviated as Tigres UANL and simply known as Tigres or internationally as Tigres de México, is a Mexican professional Association football, football club based in the Monterrey metropo ...

, and was heavily criticized by the Latin press that claimed that he had "ignored" the competition.

References

External links

Official webpage
{{2012 in South American Football (CONMEBOL) 1