Tim Vickery column

By Tim Vickery South American football reporter

Read my answers to this week's questions

The Copa Libertadores, South America's Champions League, gets under way this week with a brief qualifying round.

The first team in action, at home to Mineros of Venezuela in Tuesday's first leg, are Arsenal of Argentina, and the tournament debutants will be hoping to retain the momentum they built up last year.

Brazil's Lucio has a reputation as a no-nonsense defender

The tiny club from the outskirts of Buenos Aires have traditionally been totally in the shadow of their far bigger neighbours Racing and Independiente.

The club celebrated their half centenary in style in December, accumulating piles of prestige when they fought back to beat America of Mexico and claim the South American Cup, the continent's Uefa Cup equivalent.

It was a remarkable triumph. They were the underdogs in every round.

Before beating America they saw off another Mexican opponent (Chivas Guadalajara), a team from Brazil (Goias) and two giants from their own country, San Lorenzo and River Plate.

And Arsenal won the cup without even winning a single game at home.

A repeat in the Libertadores is unlikely. It is by a long way the continent's most important club competition, and while the South American Cup is home and away knockout all the way from start to finish, in the Libertadores there is a group phase.

Providing Arsenal get past Mineros they will come up against Libertad of Paraguay, LDU of Ecuador and Fluminense of Brazil - a tough group, from which only two teams will make it through to the knockout stage.

Hanging on to draws and hoping for an away goal is not much use in the group matches, where winning at home usually marks the difference between qualification and elimination.

But Arsenal's first piece of silverware does illustrate an interesting truth about contemporary South American club competitions. You can never be exactly sure where the danger will come from.

Last year's debutants included Cucuta of Colombia, a club from near the Venezuelan border who until recently had been playing in front of a couple of hundred supporters in their country's second division.

It did seem that the Libertadores would be all too much for them, especially when they won none of their first four group games, and scored just two goals in the process.

If they can follow up their South American Cup victory with a triumph in the Libertadoes then their feat will never be forgotten

Then they suddenly went mad, scoring 19 times in their next seven matches, playing some exhilarating football and finding themselves on the brink of the final before they were knocked out in dramatic fashion by Boca Juniors on a foggy night in Buenos Aires.

This year Cucuta are back, but it would be unwise to expect a repeat performance. The club have been busy breaking up the side by selling off some of the key players.

It has now plunged them into chaos. Coach Jorge Luis Bernal, the architect of last year's campaign, got fed up with it and resigned in protest over the weekend, with just two and a half weeks to go before their opening match.

All South American clubs, even the biggest, are in a constant state of flux, and as far as the Libertadores is concerned the instability is amplified by the fact that the competition kicks off just as the January transfer window is closing.

The plans of the coach can be torn up if a tempting offer arrives for his key players. It is the type of environment where a modest side who hit form at the right time can go a long way.

So who will be the surprise packages in this year's Libertadores? Caracas or Union Maracaibo of Venezuela, Audax Italiano of Chile, or maybe Lanus, another debutant from Argentina?

Or perhaps it really will be Arsenal. If they can follow up their South American Cup victory with a triumph in the Libertadores then their feat will never be forgotten - back to back wins for 'El Arse'.

You can put your questions to Tim Vickery every week on the World Football Phone-in on Radio 5 Live's Up All Night programme from 0230 to 0400 GMT every Saturday. You can also download last week's World Football Phone-in Podcast.

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YOUR QUESTIONS ANSWERED

Got a question about South American football for Tim Vickery? E-mail him at [e-mail]

What can you tell me about young Argentine Franco Di Santo who has signed for Chelsea? I've read that he's the latest to be compared to the great Diego Maradona even though he is 6ft 4in tall! Can he can be a success in the Premier League or has he moved to Europe too soon?
Ben Carter

I fear he has, Ben. He's a very interesting prospect, reminds me of a young Roque Santa Cruz with that beanpole build and surprisingly subtle ground skills. But I don't think he's physically ready for the Premier League - Argentina didn't think he was ready for last year's World Youth Cup. So he's clearly running the risk of losing momentum by simply not playing enough, or by being loaned out here and there. I'm convinced that the best thing he could have done with the next few months was stay in South America and play the Libertadores - if not with Audax Italiano then with a bigger club in Chile or back in his native Argentina. So often when players miss out a flight of stairs like this they end up sliding back down.

What do you make of my team Birmingham City's latest acquisition, Mauro Zarate? Do you think he will be a success, or will he fail with us as our last two Argentine imports (Alberto Tarantini and Luciano Figueroa) did?
Daniel Ivery

He's a very talented striker - not so much back to goal, but terrific cutting in from wide spaces, pace, bags of skill and creativity, two feet, a very exciting player. Some words of caution, though. He's never struck me as the most mature player in the world. There are times when he needs to calm down, and it will be a test for Alex McLeish to get the best out of him. Also the timing makes it difficult for him. He's just had a few months in Qatar (a strange move, and he admits that he realised after a week that he'd made a mistake), but really I think that faces the problem of January signings - he's straight into a style of football which is much faster and more physical than anything he's known, with much less time to decide what to do with the ball - and he doesn't even have a pre-season to help him settle in. So he's climbing the mountain the hard way. But if he fails, it won't be for lack of skill.