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Originally Posted by Chappy
Great write-up so far, although I'm very confused by all these cups and groups...
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Here is my best explaination on the cups and groups. Anyone who knows for sure please correct me if I am wrong.
The Champions Cup that I discussed earlier is a European tournament. I believe it is considered the most prestigous club tournament in the world. The event is open to the champions and maybe second and third place clubs also from each of the individual country premier leagues in Europe. It is divided into several stages - the first couple being a home and home total goal series mainly involving top clubs from the smaller countries. The field gets trimmed to 32 teams which is where we are now.
Those 32 teams are divided into 8 groups of 4 and they play a double round robin series. The top two clubs in each of the 8 groups advance to a 16 team elimation series and it is eventually pared down to 1 team winning the European Club Championship.
In addition to the European championship every country runs its own Cup tournament (like the Scottish Cup I mentioned above). Each country's cup event is wide open so that any pro team regardless of its division can enter. It is a single elimination tournament and usually teams from the higher leagues get byes into the later rounds. Conceivably a team from the lowest division in a country could win the Cup championship.
To confuse things more I believe there is a second tournament in Europe for the Cup winners from each country. I believe its format is similiar to the European Champions Cup that I described above. The difference in the two is the Champions Cup is for the Regular season league champs from each nation while the Cup Winners Cup is for the winners of each countries open tournament.
On top of that we have the exact same type of events going on in Africa, Asia, South America and North America plus World Cup qualifying.
The game does a decent job explaining the basics of each event but playing it has got me interested in trying to learn more.
Hope that helps.