By Tim Vickery BBC Sport Online

This week the action kicks off in the 44th version of the Copa Libertadores, South America's equivalent of the Champions League.

Between this Tuesday and 2 July, 32 teams from 10 countries will fight for the title.

They are distributed in eight groups and the top two from each group go through to the second phase from where the format is home and away knock-out all the way to the final.

The structure is logical, easy to understand... and far less convoluted than the Champions League.

But structure, clearly, is not everything. The total prize money at stake in the Libertadores is $20 million, half of what it was two years ago and chicken feed compared with what is on the European plate.

The sleek sports car of European football has driven itself into a wall

It helps explain why, in the last round of the Champions League, all 16 surviving teams had South Americans in their starting line-up.

In all 45 of the continent's players saw action - mainly Brazilians and Argentines, but also a handful from Colombia, Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay.

All over South America, players have been in a rush to make their fortune on the other side of the Atlantic. They would rather play in the Champions League than the Libertadores.

The format of the tournament, then, matters less than the overall economic context.

But that context is now changing in a significant way. The sleek sports car of European football has driven itself into a wall.

There is no longer the same kind of money flying around. The transfer window opened and closed with few South Americans having been gobbled up by the European giants.

From the South American point of view, there has been a collapse in external demand.

Is this a disaster for South America? Perhaps not. A crude comparison could be made with the aftermath of the 1929 Wall Street Crash.

Up until that point, South America's sole economic role had been to provide raw materials for the First World.

The more the clubs sell the deeper in debt they seem to be, while the mansions of the directors and agents get bigger and bigger

Its landowning class did very well out of such trade, and internal development was not on their agenda.

Then came the Great Depression, with its resulting collapse in external demand. The position of the landowning class was weakened, and the space appeared for a new brand of populist politician who promoted internal development through dustrialisation, labour legislation and so on.

The merits of the likes of Vargas in Brazil and Peron in Argentina can certainly be debated. Their reforms were patchy and incomplete.

But there is no doubt that following the Wall Street Crash the societies they ruled experienced decades of progress.

In our, admittedly crude comparison the role of the landowning class is taken by those directors and agents selling raw materials - ie footballers - to Europe.

The trade hardly seems to benefit the local scene. The more the clubs sell the deeper in debt they seem to be, while the mansions of the directors and agents get bigger and bigger.

So the problems at the centre of football's economy need not necessarily be bad for the peripheries. South American football has been invaded by those looking for a piece of the cross-Atlantic trade.

Now the bottom has fallen out of the market there is the opportunity for a new type of director to make his mark - by basing his vision on internal development rather than external sales.

And making the most of the Copa Libertadores should be at the heart of the strategy.