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