What a cup is in football and how the ELDT Cup is played
A cup is a knockout competition: in every tie the loser goes out and the winner goes through, all the way to the final.
Unlike the league, where the most consistent side wins, in a cup one bad day is enough to go out. That is why cups are the competition of surprises: a small club can knock out a big one in a single match.
In ELDT every country has its own ELDT Cups: four of them (A, B, C and D), split by level so that each club meets opponents of its own size, and their champions then play the Supercup. They are knockout competitions, one round a week, on Tuesdays from 19:00 local time in waves every 15 minutes. When clubs from different divisions meet, the lower-division club plays at home. There is no extra time: a tie level after 90 minutes goes straight to penalties, 5 per side and then sudden death, taken by the 5 outfield starters who finish best.
Every round you reach pays prize money, and the amounts grow: $2.5M for winning the round of 16, $5M the quarter-finals, $10M the semi-final, $15M for the runner-up and $25M for the champion. On Wednesdays at 19:00 come the international cups of each continent (in Europe, the European Champions Cup and the European Challenge Cup, on Madrid time; in the Americas, the Champions Cup of the Americas and the Challenge Cup, on Argentine time).
See it in the game: the manager's guide.
Related terms
More on Competitions
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