Can you explain how Champions league, Capital Cup etc. work?

[Optimus_Steel]

Fairly new international soccer fan, still learning. I notice that during the regular season, teams are also playing games for other tournaments and series using their back ups. How do they make it work? It also seems like even if teams lose in the tournament they are not eliminated right away?

[Slava]

Champions league has a qualifying stage (knock out), a group stage (not knockout) and then the final knock out stages (home and away games) starting from a round of 16. The top 2 teams from each league qualify for the champions league, 3rd and 4th teams have to play a qualifying round. Top 2 teams from each group in the group stage go to the round of 16. This is the best competition in Europe for club level.

Capital one cup is knockout tournament with single games until the QFs and then home and away legs in the semis, one game final. This is like the least priority for most teams.

[5DOM]

I’ll use an English Premier League (PL) team as an example.

There are 20 teams in the PL, and in a PL season, each team plays the other 19 home and away, for a total of 38 games. At the end of the 38-games season, the bottom three get relegated to the second division called The Championship while three teams from The Championship get promoted to replace them in next season’s campaign. The top four teams in the PL get to play in the Champions League (CL) and this is a Europe-wide competition that’s generally regarded as the biggest club competition in the world. Every domestic league sends their designated number of representatives to the CL, and in PL’s case, it’s 4 - same as Germany’s Bundesliga and Spain’s La Liga.

There are also two domestic cup competitions in England: The League Cup (or Capital One Cup) and the FA Cup. The former involves all clubs from England’s top four divisions whereas the latter includes all. Both are knock-out basis, so once you lose, you are out. The Capital One Cup is usually seen as the bonus competition and it’s at the lowest priority for most top teams in the PL.

The two winners from the above cup competitions and 5th place finisher from the PL get to play in the Europa League and it’s basically the lesser version of CL that most people don’t really care about.

So the last season’s top 4 PL teams United, City, Chelsea and Arsenal now play in this year’s CL. And 5th place Tottenham are joined by Capital One Cup winners Swansea and FA Cup winners Wigan to play in the Europa League.

Both the CL and the Europa League are part-group-stage, part-knockout basis, and once you get past the group stage which is basically a 4-teams, 6-games league campaign, it becomes a KO competition like the cup competitions above. The difference is that at each level, two games are played, one at home and one away.

The formats are similar in most major leagues but they usually have one domestic cup competition rather than 2.

[USA]

I'll try to give a quick over view. We will use England for an example and my fellow soccer fans, please feel free to correct my mistakes.

1. Premier League. It is the top 20 teams in the country. Every year 3 teams get relegated to the lower league and 3 teams get promoted to the top league. This happens down the line in lower leagues also. I am not sure if the promotion numbers stay the same in lower leagues or no thought. The league winner is determined by the number of point they earn during the regular season. No playoffs like American sports so every game counts.

2. Champions league. It is a European competition only. The top 2 teams from the top leagues in Europe from the previous season qualify. The next 2 teams play in a qualifying round to determine if they make it into the round of 32. The lesser quality nations like many Eastern European nations for an example only get 1 team to enter or qualify instead of 4 like the bigger leagues.

3. FA cup. This is an British only tournament to where teams that are registered with the FA (Football Association) can participate (Top 4 leagues similar to it being MLB, AAA, AA, A baseball). I am not fully aware of the format but the bigger teams like the Manchesters and London clubs don't enter this tournament until the later rounds after some of the lesser teams are eliminated. (Think NFL teams playing against D2 college football teams).

4. The Capital one cup is a tournament that is open to any British football club. This is the least important tournament. It works in a similar way to the FA cup. Most of the bigger teams play their reserves for this tournament.

Some of these tournaments have group stages, some have single games that the winner advances. Some have a home and away and the winner advances on aggregate score.

All of the competitions are going on simultaneously. It is a lot of games to play so that is why many teams field weaker teams during some games.

This is a similar way it works in every country.

[Optimus_Steel]

Wow thanks for the replies, very informative. Sounds like the top teams end up playing a ton of games. How do they do it, timewise? Seems like a lot of games to squeeze in. Futbol is not like basketball in that you can play back to backs.

How come no playoff in the Premier League?

[Foye]

Wow thanks for the replies, very informative. Sounds like the top teams end up playing a ton of games. How do they do it, timewise? Seems like a lot of games to squeeze in. Futbol is not like basketball in that you can play back to backs.

How come no playoff in the Premier League?

Just not common in Europe. I prefer it without playoffs anyway. That way the best team gets the crown mostly. If you would do a 2 game series between two teams there is still a big chance that the luckier not the better team advances. Especially, if a tie is decided by who has more away goals.

For example: In CL the team that scored more away goals advances even if the overall aggregate is even. Like if two teams play 0:0 and 2:2 the team that was the away team in the 2nd game advances although an unfamiliar observer would think that there is no winner.

[LittleOzzy]

Wow thanks for the replies, very informative. Sounds like the top teams end up playing a ton of games. How do they do it, timewise? Seems like a lot of games to squeeze in. Futbol is not like basketball in that you can play back to backs.

How come no playoff in the Premier League?

Just not common in Europe. I prefer it without playoffs anyway. That way the best team gets the crown mostly. If you would do a 2 game series between two teams there is still a big chance that the luckier not the better team advances. Especially, if a tie is decided by who has more away goals.

For example: In CL the team that scored more away goals advances even if the overall aggregate is even. Like if two teams play 0:0 and 2:2 the team that was the away team in the 2nd game advances although an unfamiliar observer would think that there is no winner.

I agree it's nice not to have the playoff format in EPL.

Between Champions League, Europa and so on the knock out playoffs system still exists anyway. Gives everyone the best of both systems.

[Point forward]

In European leagues, playoffs are a bad idea b/c the respective clubs play a different amount of games, not to mention that many players have a different amount of games with their respective national teams. Quick example:

Team A plays 38 league games, is eliminated in the first round of the national cup tourney, has no games in the international competitions, and has no players in national teams. Total: 39 games for each player, great regeneration b/c they play no games in weekdays. Injuries are manageable, and players are quite fit at the end of the season.

Team B plays 38 league games, reaches the final of the national cup tourney (6 games), reaches the finals of an international competition (12 games), and each player plays 10 games in their respective national teams. Total: 66 games for each player - and low regeneration due to hectic 3-game-per-week schedule. Injuries are common, and players are gassed at the end of the season.

Now imagine Team A playing a multi-leg playoff vs Team B.

[J-Mezzy]

I'll just say this, Champions League and World Cup is where it's at!

[Optimus_Steel]

In European leagues, playoffs are a bad idea b/c the respective clubs play a different amount of games, not to mention that many players have a different amount of games with their respective national teams. Quick example:

Team A plays 38 league games, is eliminated in the first round of the national cup tourney, has no games in the international competitions, and has no players in national teams. Total: 39 games for each player, great regeneration b/c they play no games in weekdays. Injuries are manageable, and players are quite fit at the end of the season.

Team B plays 38 league games, reaches the final of the national cup tourney (6 games), reaches the finals of an international competition (12 games), and each player plays 10 games in their respective national teams. Total: 66 games for each player - and low regeneration due to hectic 3-game-per-week schedule. Injuries are common, and players are gassed at the end of the season.

Now imagine Team A playing a multi-leg playoff vs Team B.

Playing 3 games per week in futbol sounds really exhausting, in terms of stamina/endurance. I was thinking that yea it would be unfair with teams playing different amount of games.