Football Association Challenge Cup

The Football Association Challenge Cup, commonly known as the FA Cup, is a knockout cup competition in English football and is the oldest association football competition in the world.The "FA Cup" is run by and named after the Football Association and usually refers to the English men's tournament, although a women's tournament is also held. Its current sponsored name is the FA Cup with Budweiser.

The FA Cup was first held in 1871–72. Entry is open to all teams who compete in the Premier League, the Football League and in steps one to five of the FA National League System, as well as selected teams in step 6. This means that clubs of all standards compete, from the largest clubs in England and Wales down to amateur village teams. The tournament has become known for the possibility for "minnows" from the lower divisions to become "giant-killers" by eliminating top clubs from the tournament and even theoretically win the Cup, although lower division teams rarely progress beyond the early stages. The qualification rounds and a system of byes mean that the very smallest and very biggest teams almost never meet.

The holders of the FA Cup are Manchester City, who beat Stoke City 1–0 in the 2011 final for their fifth Cup triumph and first since 1969.

FA CUP'S FORMAT :

The competition is a knockout tournament with pairings for each round drawn at random. There are no seeds and the draw for each round is not made until after the scheduled dates for the previous round. The draw also determines which teams will play at home.

Each tie is played as a single leg. If a match is drawn, there is a replay, usually at the ground of the team who were away for the first game. Drawn replays are now settled with extra time and penalty shootouts, though until the 1990s further replays would be played until one team was victorious. Some ties took as many as six matches to settle; in their 1975 campaign, Fulham played a total of 12 games over six rounds, which remains the most games played by a team to reach a final. Replays were traditionally played three or four days after the original game, but from 1991–82 they were staged at least 10 days later on police advice. This led to penalty shoot-outs being introduced. Replays are no longer held for the semi-finals or final.

There are a total of 14 rounds in the competition — six qualifying rounds, followed by six further rounds (the "proper" rounds), semi-finals, and the final. The competition begins in August with the Extra Preliminary Round, followed by the Preliminary Round and First Qualifying Round, which are contested by the lowest-ranked clubs. Clubs playing in the Conference North and Conference South are given exemption to the Second Qualifying Round, and Conference National teams are given exemption to the Fourth Qualifying Round. The 32 winners from that round join the 48 clubs from League One and League Two in the First Round (often called the First Round Proper). Finally, teams from the Premier League and Football League Championship enter at the Third Round Proper, at which point there are 64 teams remaining in the competition. The Sixth Round Proper is the quarter-final stage, at which point eight teams remain.

The qualifying rounds are regionalised to reduce the travel costs for smaller non-league sides. The First and Second Rounds were also previously split into Northern and Southern sections, but this practice vas ended after the 1997–98 competition.

The FA Cup has a set pattern for when each round is played. Normally the First Round is played in mid-November, with the Second Round on one of the first two Saturdays in December. The third round is played on the first weekend in January, with the Fourth Round later in the month and Fifth Round in mid-February. The Sixth Round (or quarter-finals) traditionally occurs in early or mid March, with the semi-finals a month later. The final is normally held the Saturday after the Premier League season finishes in May. The only seasons in recent times when this pattern was not followed were 1999–2000, when most rounds were played a few weeks earlier than normal as an experiment, and 2010–2011 when the FA Cup Final was played before the Premier League season had finished, in order to allow the stadium to be ready for the UEFA Champions League final.

As well as being presented with the trophy, the winning team also qualifies for the UEFA Europa League (formerly named the UEFA Cup). If the winners have already qualified for the UEFA Champions League via the Premier League, the UEFA Europa League place goes to the FA Cup runners-up. If the winners have also qualified for the Europa League through finishing fifth in the Premier League, the FA Cup runners-up do not qualify, with the sixth placed team in the league receiving the Europa League place. If the runners-up have also qualified for the UEFA Champions League or are not entitled to play in UEFA competitions for any reason, the place goes to the next highest placed finisher in the league table. The FA Cup winners also qualify for the single-match FA Community Shield against the Premier League Champions.

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