Offensive and Defensive Performance Profiles Associated with Group-Stage Advancement in Elite International Football: An Exploratory Analysis of the 2024 Copa América

The 2024 Copa América brought together the ten CONMEBOL national teams, yet no peer-reviewed study has analysed differences in performance among individual CONMEBOL teams using StatsBomb event data from this tournament. This exploratory study aimed to characterise the offensive and defensive profiles of the CONMEBOL teams and to describe their association with advancement to the quarterfinals, with particular attention to Chile. To ensure a comparable competitive window across teams, the analysis was restricted to the 24 group-stage matches, and penalty-shootout events were excluded. Event data were obtained from StatsBomb Open Data (competition_id = 223; CC BY-SA 4.0), from which expected goals (xG), passes per defensive action (PPDA), pass completion, and passing-network metrics (density and reciprocity) were computed at match level and averaged per team. Given the small sample (n = 10 CONMEBOL teams), between-group comparisons used the Mann–Whitney U test, prioritising effect sizes (r) and bootstrapped 95% confidence intervals over the significance dichotomy. With teams classified by their actual progression (six qualified, four eliminated), xG per match and xG per shot differed significantly between groups (both U = 24, p = 0.010, r = 0.82), whereas pressing (PPDA), pass completion, and passing-network metrics did not. Because with ten teams, the smallest attainable two-sided p is 0.010, findings are interpreted jointly with effect sizes and confidence intervals. Chile recorded the third-lowest xG per match of the bloc (0.54) and was the only team without goals across three matches, with a PPDA (35.86) and a share of shots from inside the box (59.1%) close to the bloc mean. These exploratory, descriptive findings indicate that Chile’s weak offensive output coincided with its elimination; the design does not permit causal inference or the identification of generalisable discriminators.