Cup competitions

Every country in your save that has a top division runs a national knockout cup. It is a short, sharp bracket: 16 clubs, four rounds— Round of 16, quarter-finals, semi-finals, final — and every tie is a single match. The sixteen entrants are drawn from that country'sdivision 1 league, so the cup is a fight among the top flight rather than an open all-comers draw.

Format

The bracket is drawn once and re-drawn only as rounds progress; there is no seeding protection and no two-legged ties. Rounds are scheduled onSaturdays, roughly a week apart, starting from when the competition is created for the season — so cup football shares the calendar with league matchdays rather than living on its own midweek night.

Upsets happen

A knockout bracket compresses a whole season's variance into four matches. The strongest club in the country can be out after one bad Saturday, and a mid-table side that gets a kind draw can reach a final. Treat every round as a final, because in this format one is enough to end your run.

Cup money and qualification

• The home club keeps the gate in every cup round: ticket revenue is attendance × 10, and attendance scales with both your stadium and how deep the round is — the multiplier roughly doubles from the early rounds to the final.
• Cup success does not qualify you for continental competition — only winning your division 1 title does. A cup run is a revenue and palmares play, not a route into Europe.
• Winning the cup puts the competition and season into your club's palmares permanently.

Squad management

Early rounds are the right place to rotate fringe players and give youth prospects minutes. From the quarter-finals onwards, your strongest available XI should usually start. Cup ties stack on top of league fixtures, so manage energy aggressively — see the Energy article.