Between 1959 and 1970, two national championships existed to provide Brazilian representatives to Copa Libertadores. These were the Taça Brasil (1959–1968) and the Torneio Roberto Gomes Pedrosa (1967–1970). The current Campeonato Brasileiro Série A (i.e., Brazilian football league) was created in 1971 using the structure of Torneio Roberto Gomes Pedrosa. Since then, the competition has never featured the same scheduling twice, either changing the number of participants or the structure. This lack of consistency has made the competition difficult for non-Brazilians to follow and contributed to the ignorance of the tournament amongst European and American press and public, on top of the standard disregard and prejudices.

Even today, despite the tournament maintaining a consistent structure for 8 years, it is harder to find score updates on major European newspapers such as the International Herald Tribune or L'Équipe than it is for the Argentinian championships. And of course this has contributed to lack of major reference about the clubs themselves, as on top of these variations the Brazilian championship is among the most balanced in the world with its Clube dos 13, the greatest football clubs of Brazil, and other competitive clubs and as rivalries are often based in details. To better understand Brazilian football, a brief history of the Brazilian soccer national-league tournament-scheduling history is explained below on a yearly basis, with emphasis on technical aspects. Tables with final placings and a straightforward ranking based on simple rules are also provided as CBF rules for official placings have so far reflected the troubled tournament's history and as no official ranking from CBF is publicly available, let alone in detail.

Brief history

1971–1980

1971 Campeonato Nacional de Clubes – Single division w/ 20 participants

1st Phase: 2 groups of 10 teams.

Obs.: this phase illustrate a common Brazilian tournament scheduling, still popular nowadays as proved by 2006 Rio state league (Campeonato Carioca), dubbed here "split round-robin". In this scheduling, a pool of teams are split in two (or more) groups but play against all others as in a full single round-robin system. In general they will play in two stages against their own group opponents in a row (called here "internal stage") then with the other group's opponents ("external" stage). Many variants are then possible as to how the final phase is organized upon. Often each stage will have its champion and runner-up, and play-offs are organized accordingly. This system has been often used to accommodate calendar constraints as double round-robin systems would require too many rounds. The home and away matches are distributed randomly.

In 1971, the split round-robin only served to qualify the top 6 teams of each group. This odd system allowed for a team to be eliminated by having a better full season record by falling in a stronger group. In this edition though, it did not occur, and the best overall 12 teams advanced.

2nd phase: 3 groups of 4 teams. Double round-robin system. Top teams of each group qualify

Final phase: "Triangular", i.e. 1 group of 3 teams . Single round-robin. Random home and away matches.

1972 Campeonato Nacional de Clubes – Single division w/ 26 participants

1st phase: 4 groups, 2 of 6 teams and 2 of 7 teams, split round-robin similar to 1971 but with 4 groups instead of 2. The 4 top teams of each group qualified. As expectable already in 1971, it did occur this time that Santa Cruz qualified with 23 points in group C while Remo in group C did not make through with 25 points, despite playing exactly the same opponents.

2nd phase: 4 groups of 4 teams (top 2 against bottom 2 of previous phase), single round-robin with home and away matches based on first phase placing (though still top teams would play bottom teams away in second round). Top team only qualified.

Final phase: Single play-off semifinals and final. Home advantage according to combined first and second phase placings.

1973 Campeonato Nacional de Clubes – Single division w/ 40 participants

1st phase: two stages, 1st) 2 groups of 20 teams in single round-robin, teams distributed in each group randomly; and 2nd) 4 groups of 10 teams in single round-robin distributed according to region/state. Combined first and second stage top 20 teams qualified. Arguably this system favored teams from weaker regions (mainly north-east) as they would be able to play between themselves. As such, Fluminense was eliminated while Tiradentes proceeded despite placing behind Fluminense in the same group of first stage.

2nd phase: 2 groups of 10, single round-robin with random home and away matches. Top 2 teams qualified.

Final phase: "Quadrangular", i.e. 1 group of 4 in single round robin. Home and away matches order based on combined first and second phases.

1974 Campeonato Nacional de Clubes – Single division w/ 40 participants.

1st phase: 2 groups of 20. Single round-robin with random home and away matches. Top 10 of each group qualified, plus remaining top 2 overall (to compensate possible group strength imbalance), plus... remaining top 2 public attendance. Thus Fluminense and Nacional advanced despite 32nd and 34th placings. This odd feature would never be reapplied.

2nd phase: 4 groups of 6 teams. Single round-robin with random away and home matches. Top team only of each group would qualify.

Final phase: "Quadrangular". Single round-robin. Home and away matches criteria unclear.

1975 Copa Brasil – Single division w/ 46 participants

The 1975 tournament introduced the feature of repechage, which eventually would be largely practiced in the following decades in "creative" ways, and eventually allowing ground for disputes that disrupted the championship as in the late 80's.

1st phase: 4 groups, with 2 paired groups of 10 teams and 2 paired of 11 teams. The system was what could be called "complementary round-robin" as teams of one group only played against the teams of the other group paired to it, with no internal round-robin. Top 5 teams of each group qualified for main groups while remaining teams qualified for repechage groups. Group distributions were random. An odd scheduling sometimes reproduced later on for unknown reasons, except urge for randomness.

2nd phase: 2 main groups of 10 teams and 4 repechage groups (2 of 5 and 2 of 6 teams). Main groups would reuse "complementary round-robin" system. Repechage groups single round-robin. Both random home and away matches. Top 6 teams of main groups and top team of repechage groups would qualify.

3rd phase: 2 groups of 8 teams. This time, standard single round-robin system (probably because of play-off needs). Top 2 would qualify.

Final phase: single play-off semi-finals and final. Home advantage on 3rd phase group placing (crossed winner vs runner-up).

Ranking issues: Final placings for top 16 teams based only on third phase placings, irrespective of first and second phase, given the inconsistency of those phases and differences between main and repechage groups. Also the third phase was large enough to provide a significant placing. Thus Flamengo and América-RJ are given both 5th place, for instance, instead of 7th and 8th according to CBF. Teams re-qualified from repechage are thus placed ahead of eliminated main group teams. Placing of eliminated main and repechage group teams consider 1st phase results as there was no elimination in the latter.

1976 Copa Brasil – Single division w/ 54 participants (similar to 1975)

First phase: 6 groups of 9 teams. Single round robin. Random home and away matches. Top 4 of each group would qualify to main groups of second phase, remaining would go to repechage groups.

Second phase: 4 main groups of 6 teams and 6 repechage groups of 5 teams. Single round robin. Random home and away matches. Top 3 of main groups and top team of repechage groups qualified.

Third phase: 2 groups of 9 teams. Single round-robin. Random home and away matches. Top two of each group qualified.

Final phase: single play-off semi-finals and final. Home advantage to 3rd phase group winners.

Ranking issues: same as for 1975.

1977 Copa Brasil – Single division w/ 60 participants

1st phase: 6 groups of 10. Single round robin. Top 5 qualify. Remaining to repechage.

2nd phase: 6 main groups for 5 teams and 6 repechage groups of 5 teams. Single round-robin. Top 3 of main groups and top team of repechage groups qualified.

3rd phase: 4 group of 6 teams. Single round robin. Top team qualify

Final phase: single play-off semi-finals and final. Home advantage on combined phase results.

1978 Copa Brasil – Single division w/ 74 participants.

1st phase: 2 groups of 13 teams and 6 of 12 teams. Single round-robin. Top 6 qualify. Remaining to repechage

2nd phase: 4 main groups of 9 teams. Round-robin. Top 6 qualify plus 1 on combined 1st and 2nd phase results. 6 repechage groups, 2 of 7 teams and 4 of 6 teams. Round-robin. Top teams qualified plus 1 on combined 1st and 2nd phase results.

3rd phase: 4 groups of 8 teams. Round-robin. Top 2 qualify

Final phase: home and away quarterfinals, semifinals and final play-offs. Home and qualifying (two draws) advantage on better season record.

1979 Copa Brasil – Single division w/ 96 participants

The 1979 tournament was by no means a banal one: changing from the previous repechage system, the organizers scheduled phases with teams from Rio and São Paulo state league state as byes, directly entering the competition in the second phase. On top, the champion and runner-up of 1978 tournament only entered the last (third) phase, thus totalling only the odd figure of 3 matches for their whole participation if they did not reach the final phase(what did occur with Guarani play-offs. And Palmeiras ranked 3rd after playing only 5 matches. Because of this and as Guarani and Palmeiras were both from São Paulo state, major rival teams from this state (Corinthians, São Paulo, Santos and Portuguesa), byes to second phase, required jealously also to enter directly third phase, thus abandoning the tournament as their request was refused. The tournament displayed a record number of participants (perhaps worldwide for a single high-level football tournament). The competition schedulers managed though to break this record in the 2000 tournament with more than 100 entrants.

1st phase: 80 teams (16 teams as byes initially). 8 groups of 10 teams, distributed by region, out of which 2 groups (G and H) from stronger Minas and Rio Grande leagues. Round robin. Top 4 qualified from the 6 weaker league groups and top 8 qualified from the stronger league groups, totalling 40 qualified. As 4 teams withdrew from the tournament on second phase, they were replaced by remaining top 4 teams on overall results among the 8 groups.

2nd phase: 56 teams (12 teams entering directly second phase, 6 from Rio and São Paulo state each, 2 teams as byes). 7 groups of 8 teams. Round robin. Top 2 qualified.

3rd phase: 16 teams (2 last byes entering this phase). 4 groups of 4 teams. Round robin. Top team qualified.

Final phase: Double semi-final and final play-offs with home advantage on better season record (though difficult to establish n the case of third-phase byes).

Ranking issues: this barely atypical tournament raises the issues of the placings of the bye teams, especially the two entering third phase. Placings for top 16 teams only take into account the third phase and placing of the remaining 40 teams only consider second phase, thus making the first phase irrelevant to final placings. Also noteworthy though ultimately irrelevant for the ranking, the eliminated teams from group G and H from the first phase were considered better placed than those from the remaining 6 groups, as groups G and H manifestly were considered a higher tier (8 qualified out of 10 instead of 4 out of 10 for the lower tier groups).