1947 South American Championship

The 1947 South American Championship was the thirteenth edition of the South America Championship. This was the first time that Ecuador held the competition and also saw a change to the format which included a qualifying round to get the teams down to six which would be a feature until the 1971 edition.

In the final round it was Uruguay who would take out the title for the fifth time as they won the competition on goal difference from Paraguay.

Background
In late 1946, CONMEBOL held a meeting to decided on a possible change in the format of the competition with the suggestion of having two groups instead of having one big group. This was after the lopsided results that affected the result as the champion was already revealed with matches still left. The change was that the lowest ranked teams would enter a qualifying event to claim the final spots in the six-team draw. The main reason was to keep the final round numbers even and in time they would be able to expand.

Qualifying Round
For the first time in the history of the South American Championship, a qualifying system was used to bring down the teams from 8 to 6. This was done by having the bottom four teams in the rankings. This rule was avoided for Ecuador as they had hosting rights for the championship. The results that came in the qualifying round came as no shock with the higher ranked teams of Chile and Paraguay winning into the final round.