The Copa Rio (English: Rio Cup) was an international club football tournament with teams from Europe and South America, having been held on two occasions, in 1951 and 1952, in Brazil. Both editions were organised and endorsed by the Brazilian Sports Confederation (Confederação Brasileira de Desportos), the then Brazilian FA and sports main body. The tournament is often regarded in Brazil as an official tournament, at least as far as the Brazilian clubs are concerned. The name Copa Rio, Portuguese for Rio Cup, was a homage to Rio de Janeiro City. The 1951 edition of the competition was also hailed as "Club World Cup" or "World Champions Cup" by the Brazilian FA and press. Though some previous club competitions (Football World Championship, Sir Thomas Lipton Trophy, Coupe des Nations) may have been hailed as "the club world contest", Copa Rio was the first attempt at creating a Club World Cup with intercontinental reach.
Two editions of the Copa Rio were held, in 1951 and 1952. Brazilian club Palmeiras won the 1951 tournament, and Fluminense, also from Brazil and co-organizer of the 1952 edition, won the competition in 1952 (CBD, the Brazilian FA, entitled Fluminense to organise the 1952 tournament as part of its 50th anniversary celebrations- the second edition of the tournament was originally scheduled to 1953, but was advanced to 1952 for the aforementioned anniversary celebrations). In 1951 and 1952, Copa Rio suffered the concurrence of the Latin Cup, as some European clubs declined to participate in the former in order to participate in the latter; in 1952, Copa Rio suffered the concurrence of the 1952 Small Club World Cup, as Millonarios and Real Madrid declined to participate in the former in order to participate in the latter. The 1951-1952 Copa Rio was succeeded by another intercontinental club cup organised by the Brazilian FA, the 1953 Torneio Octogonal Rivadavia Correa Meyer, which was then often referred to also as Copa Rio by the European press, which was won by Vasco da Gama from Brazil. In 1953, the Uruguayan FA launched their own intercontinental club cup, based on Copa Rio, and named Copa Montevideo, having been played in Uruguay in 1953 and 1954, won respectively by Nacional and Peñarol. The last attempt of the Brazilian FA to create an intercontinental club cup occurred in 1955, with the Torneio Internacional Charles Miller won by Corinthians, the same year the European Cup emerged and became the main international priority of the European football clubs. In 1960, the International Soccer League rose in the USA as another attempt at creating a "Club World Cup" along the lines of Copa Rio, but, as a "world-champions honour", it was overshadowed in importance by the Intercontinental Cup.
History Creation
The competition was the brainchild of Brazilian sports journalist Mário Filho, from Jornal dos Sports newspaper, who envisaged it as a Club World Cup (based on the FIFA World Cup for nations, held in Brazil in 1950) to be permanently held in Brazil, turning (according to him) Rio de Janeiro as "world's club football capital city". Mário Filho put the idea forward in 1950, during the 1950 FIFA World Cup, framing the idea as a possibly promising "club version" of the FIFA World Cup, having the idea been praised by Jules Rimet, Ottorino Barassi and Stanley Rous, who were in Brazil for the 1950 FIFA World Cup. The Brazilian FA endorsed Mário Filho's idea, and organised the competition with a view to creating a Club World Cup. Two top-ranking FIFA officials helped organise the competition, framing the tournament model and helping convince European clubs to participate: Ottorino Barassi and Stanley Rous (the latter having participated only for the 1951 tournament, while the former participated for both 1951-1952 tournaments and also for the 1953 successor tournament, having Barassi come personally to Rio de Janeiro often in 1951 for that reason). FIFA president Jules Rimet made statements praising and bidding good luck to the initiative of the Brazilian FA. The Brazilian FA and press, at the time of the 1951 tournament, dubbed it a "Club World Cup" or "World Champions Cup", a label that would later be applied to the Intercontinental Cup (1960–2004) and the FIFA Club World Cup.
Organization
The idea was to gather together the reigning champions of the world's top football national leagues, in order to determine the world club champion, following the "champions cup" model of competitions such as the Latin Cup and the South American Championship of Champions, the same model that would be used in 1955 for the creation of the UEFA Champions League. At first, a 16-club cup was envisaged, following the FIFA World Cup intended number of participants; however, this proposal was soon shortened to an 8-club cup. In 1951, there did not exist the FIFA Ranking, nor any "qualification tournament" for clubs to qualify to intercontinental club competitions (from 1960 on, the UEFA Champions and Libertadores cups would serve as "qualification tournaments" for the Intercontinental Cup), so in 1951 the organisers of Copa Rio (the Brazilian FA, Ottorino Barassi, Stanley Rous, Mário Filho) had to rely on their view of football history (mainly the FIFA World Cup history) in order to elect which were the strongest national football leagues of the world, whose champion clubs would be invited to Copa Rio. According to Brazilian newspapers O Estado de São Paulo and Jornal do Brasil, and Spanish newspaper El Mundo Deportivo, the original 8-club plan of the Brazilian FA (organiser of Copa Rio) was to organise the competition with the reigning champion clubs of the Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo state Leagues (the first Brazilian national cup, named Taça Brasil, was not established until 1959, and the Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo state leagues were – and still are – the strongest state leagues in Brazil), as well as the reigning club champions from Uruguay, Italy, Spain, England (participants at the 1950 FIFA World Cup, held in Brazil, not to mention the status of Uruguay and Italy as former FIFA World Cup Champions and England as the founders of the sport), Portugal (the Portuguese champions were invited in order to please the huge Portuguese community living in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo) and Scotland (based on Scotland being as successful as England in the British Home Championship). It must be borne in mind that, in 1951, some countries (such as Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, Colombia, Chile, Mexico, etc) were not yet considered as strong-football countries (given their 1930-1950 FIFA World Cup history), and that Germany and the Iron Curtain countries (Soviet Union, Hungary, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria and Romania) were then excluded from international football due to the post-War, early Cold War tensions. During the first talks about the organization of Copa Rio, some other countries were considered, such as Argentina (Argentina was already a very relevant country in football, but the Argentines chose not to participate in the 1950 FIFA World Cup held in Brazil, as Brazil's and Argentina's Football Associations had severed relations after a brawl in a 1946 match between the two national teams) and Sweden (the 3rd placed-team in the 1950 FIFA World Cup, whose champion Malmö FF was not invited as the club had not pleased the Brazilian football audience in a former visit to the country), but the final plan of the Brazilian FA for the organisation of Copa Rio (published by Jornal dos Sports on March 16th 1951) ended up consisting of an 8-team cup with the reigning champions (1950 South American season and 1950/1951 European season) of Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Portugal, Spain, England, Scotland, Italy and Uruguay. However, no British or Spanish clubs accepted to participate in Copa Rio: Tottenham, Newcastle United, Hibernian, Barcelona and Atlético Madrid were all invited to the 1951 Copa Rio and declined to participate (as for the Madrid team, they declined participation in Copa Rio supposedly due to its proximity of dates with the Latin Cup).
Thus, the Brazilian FA invited/accepted teams from other countries to participate in Copa Rio: Nice, from France, Austria Wien, from Austria (at the time, the most successful federation at the Mitropa Cup), and Red Star, from Yugoslavia (the next highest-ranked nation at the 1950 World Cup). However, the Austrian representative, Austria Wien, were previous national champions (1949-1950 season), while another club, Rapid Wien, were the reigning (1950-1951 season) Austrian champions; Rapid Wien were not invited to Copa Rio by the Brazilian FA as the club had not pleased the Brazilian audience in a previous tour to the country. As for the Italian representative, the Brazilian FA invited the reigning (1950-1951) Italian champions AC Milan, who declined to participate (supposedly due to the proximity of dates between Copa Rio and the Latin Cup), whereupon the organisers invited the previous (1949-1950) Italian champions Juventus, who participated in Copa Rio. Also in 1951, for the first edition of the tournament, Mexican club Atlas requested participation and were denied, while the Indian Football Association requested the participation of a representative club and were also denied. Therefore, the final list of participants of the 1951 Copa Rio ended up being: Vasco da Gama (1950 Rio de Janeiro state champions), Palmeiras (1950 São Paulo state champions), Sporting CP (1950/51 Portuguese champions), Austria Wien (1949/50 Austrian champions), Nacional (1950 Uruguayan champions), Red Star (1951 Yugoslav champion), Juventus (1949/50 Italian champions) and OGC Nice (1950/51 French champions). The Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Portugal, Uruguay, Yugoslavia and France representatives were the reigning (the then current) champions of their leagues. Palmeiras won the 1951 Copa Rio.