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Competitions/setups with unusual/strange formats & rules


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Not everyone's content with a bog standard setup of a round robin playing teams x amounts of times & a cup or two in a straight up knockout format.

The most prominent example of this is the apetura (opening) & clasura (closing) format used in the majority of Central & South American nations with exceptions in Argentina, Brazil & Chile. Belize owing to it being Anglophone uses the English terms with Haiti in the Caribbean using the terms ouverture & fermeture due to being a Francophone nation. In short this setup means  a split season with each having it's own champion. How the champion of each stage is determined varies with some using playoffs & others just the round robin. Some countries also have the winners of each split play each other for to decide an overall champion. For the purposes of relegation in general an average points table is used either for the split seasons in that year or across two or more seasons.

Brazil using a round robin doesn't preclude it from being out of the norm. In addition to the four national tiers teams also play in State leagues which are a made up of both the teams playing at national level & smaller local level teams. The state leagues also act as a method of qualifying to Serie D, the bottom tier of the national Brazilian pyramid for teams not currently part of the national setup. Add in the possibility of a deep run in the Brazillian Cup plus a continental campaign & a club can have an end of season game count that's eye watering.

India also has state leagues that function similar to Brazil but without acting as a method of qualifying for the national league structure. India also currently has two tier 1 leagues with both the Indian Super League & I-League but the I-league is to officially become the 2nd tier for 2022.

During a period in the 70's the old Central Junior Region had a three division setup named A, B & C with movement between each. Seems pretty normal until you realise at the end of the season the winners of each would play each other to determine an overall champion. In theory this meant a team winning the 3rd tier could be the regions champion.

The Dutch 2nd tier Eerste Divisie within it's 38 game round robin has 4 'periods' which only actually accounts for 32 games. At the end of the season the top two in the round robin gain promotion to the Eredivisie with the best six teams across the four periods not already qualified for the Eredivisie going into the promotion/relegation playoff alongside the 16th placed Eredivise side. At least that's how I think it works.

Leagues in the French overseas territories of New Caledonia, Tahiti, Martinique, Guadelope, French Guiana, Saint-Martin & Saint-Barthélemy use a points structure of 4 for a win, 2 for a draw & 1 for a loss. I'm unsure if Mayotte & Réunion use this format also. The 4th tier & below of France itself used this format at one point last being used in 15-16.

Edited by GNU_Linux
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I've never been able to get my nut round the Belgian league. I'm sure that there's some really comp!updated play off system at the end.
Don't worry, most Belgians don't understand it either...

It also changes pretty much every year.
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I've never been able to get my nut round the Belgian league. I'm sure that there's some really complicated play off system at the end.


I think Austria have the same 'halving of points' system. Not aware of anyone else but there must be others.
Another point on Austria. After the split (12 team league split 6-6) the 5th placed team gets a spot in the playoff final for the last European place. The top two teams in the relegation side of the split (7th & 8th) play each other in the semi final. 6th place gets nothing.
I don't understand why 6th and 7th don't play each other in the semi instead. Very odd setup.
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2 hours ago, charger29 said:

 


I think Austria have the same 'halving of points' system. Not aware of anyone else but there must be others.
Another point on Austria. After the split (12 team league split 6-6) the 5th placed team gets a spot in the playoff final for the last European place. The top two teams in the relegation side of the split (7th & 8th) play each other in the semi final. 6th place gets nothing.
I don't understand why 6th and 7th don't play each other in the semi instead. Very odd setup.

 

Maybe they're Jewish...

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Great thread.

My understanding is countries like France who use 4/2/1pts system in lower levels is to incentivise clubs not to scratch i.e. even if you play and lose you get 1pt.

As noted Belgian's league system is crazy on so many levels. However an extra novelty is that until recently the automatic relegation place was decided by a baseball-style "best of 5".

Some years ago in the Brazilian Cup you didn't have to play 2nd-leg if you won by 3 or 4 goals in 1st-leg.

Back in 1950s or 1960s there was an Israeli season which was 2yrs long. Sort of opposite of Aperture/Clausura. It was to make each game less important, thus reduce hooliganism at top-of-the-table clashes... mammoth 60-game season instead of 30-game season.

However nothing will ever surpass this beauty: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbados_4–2_Grenada

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Closer to home the East of Scotland League has been 'interesting' recently:


2018-19     https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018–19_East_of_Scotland_Football_League
League comprised 3 parallel conferences of 13 who played each other home-&-away for 24 games.
Overall title was settled by a round-robin between the 3 conferences winners: each played 1 home game, 1 away game, and had 1 day as the odd team.

Quote

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018–19_East_of_Scotland_Football_League#Championship_play-off
Tie-breakers = Goal Difference; Goals For; Head-to-Head Result; Away Goals For; Aways Goals in Head-to-Head Result; record in conference (points; GD; GF; away GF)
Drawn matches would go to penalties for 1pt bonus

Saturday 27th April 2019 ... Penicuik Athletic 3-2 Broxburn Athletic

Wednesday 1st May 2019 ... Bonnyrigg Rose Athletic 2-1 Penicuik Athletic

Saturday 4th May 2019 ... Broxburn Athletic 2-3 Bonnyrigg Rose Athletic
0-0 ... Bonnyrigg winning round-robin by 1pt
(Bonnyrigg's goalkeeper is sent off)
1-0 ... Penicuik winning round-robin on Goals For
2-0 ... Broxburn winning round-robin on Goal Difference
2-1 ... Penicuik winning round-robin on Head-to-Head v Broxburn
2-2 ... Bonnyrigg winning round-robin by 1pt
2-3 ... Bonnyrigg win round-robin by 3pts


2019-20     https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019–20_East_of_Scotland_Football_League#Results_2
First Division comprised 2 parallel conferences of 12 who played each other home-&-away (22 games)
and played the other conference 6 home/6 away (12 games)
for overall total 34 games
Overall title was to be settled by a home-&-away playoff

Edited by HibeeJibee
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On 05/06/2021 at 16:55, GNU_Linux said:

Leagues in the French overseas territories of New Caledonia, Tahiti, Martinique, Guadelope, French Guiana, Saint-Martin & Saint-Barthélemy use a points structure of 4 for a win, 2 for a draw & 1 for a loss. I'm unsure if Mayotte & Réunion use this format also. The 4th tier & below of France itself used this format at one point last being used in 15-16.

All the French leagues below the National 3*  (fifth level) use 4 points for a win, 2 for a draw and 1 for a loss. The idea is to supposedly encourage clubs to fulfil fixtures, but it's really no different to 3-1-0 otherwise. The overseas territories have their top divisions at the sixth level, generically called Régional 1, although there's no promotion for clubs to the metropolitan French leagues.

The best thing about French football is the Coupe de France, where overseas clubs can qualify to play in the early rounds, leading to some truly huge trips that would even make Wick Academy wince: 2018 AS Dragon of Tahiti did a 30,000 km round trip to lose 2-0 to Versailles 78. Last year JS Saint-Pierroise from Réunion made it to the Round of 32, only going out to SAS Épinal after extra time, plus this year Club Fransicain went out in the same round 5-0 to Angers. Amateur clubs can volunteer to be entered in the draw against overseas teams with expenses covers by the FFF.

*Only the third level National is truly national. National 2 has four regional divisions and National 3 has 12!

Edited by Cyclizine
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San Marino has a mad system.  Until 2018 the opening round of the Cup was a group stage, to reduce 15 teams to 8.  But the league is incomprehensible:

-two groups, one of 8 and one of 7, the teams play each other once;

-the top 4 of each go into another group, in which each team plays each other twice;

-the remaining seven go into a sort of repechage group;

-the top 6 of the main group, and winners of the repechage group, go into a quarter-final bracket;

-the eighth team in that is the winner of a playoff between the 2nd and 3rd in the repechage group.

And from then it is a straightforward knockout, although even then there are complications, as the losers play off against each other for the minor positions.

 

Last time they were able to run the thing in full, in 2019, the champions were Tre Penne (Three Feathers), who were 6th out of 8 in their original group, and who won through the repechage division.

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San Marino used a different format until 2018. They had 2 conferences... 8+7... who met each other twice, plus the other conference once. This was followed by double-elimination playoffs for title... so complicated it's difficult to understand even visually:

SM.thumb.JPG.e86c85c31041e27fd0b29df568dee321.JPG


They actually ran a straightforward 15-team division this season (ultimately cut from 28-games to 14-games due to disruption) followed by QFs > SFs > Final for title. I wonder if they'll stick with that.

Their cup previously comprised 3 groups of 5 (each playing 8 games) then QFs > SFs > Final. However in 2016 this became 3 groups of 4 (each playing 6 games) and 1 group of 3 (who met 3 times instead of twice to also total 6 games). Then in 2019 it became  knockout, but every round except Final was 2-legged; but this season due to disruption only the opening round was 2-legged.

Evidently not playing each other enough... they also have a "Super Cup"!

EDIT: Actually that might be an improvement... their Super Cup began in 2012 - before that ran 4-team Federal Trophy for league playoff finalists and cup finalists!

Edited by HibeeJibee
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44 minutes ago, Brummie Clyde said:

Such a shame they can't find one more team to play in their competitions, so they have 16.

Think San Marino Calcio play in the Italian lower leagues.

Been a few interesting years for them. In 2019 they dissolved & merged with Italian club A.C. Cattolica Calcio forming Cattolica Calcio S.M playing out of the town of Cattolica in Rimini about 21 miles east of San Marino but the club was registered as a Sanmarinese club. Fast forward to May 2021 & the mergers been broken off with the club  now back standalone under the name Associazione Sportiva Football Club San Marino 2021. Playing in the 5th tier Eccellenza for next season from what I can muster of skimming through Italian sources.

Interesting tangent is that current Sanmarinese club A.C. Juvenes/Dogana played in both the Sanmarinese & Italian leagues at the same time with their last appearance in Italian football being the 06-07 season. The two teams who merged in 2000 S.S. Juvenes & G.S. Dogana to form the current club were doing double league dipping at the time of the merger.

Edited by GNU_Linux
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On 06/06/2021 at 20:05, Cyclizine said:

All the French leagues below the National 3*  (fifth level) use 4 points for a win, 2 for a draw and 1 for a loss. The idea is to supposedly encourage clubs to fulfil fixtures, but it's really no different to 3-1-0 otherwise. The overseas territories have their top divisions at the sixth level, generically called Régional 1, although there's no promotion for clubs to the metropolitan French leagues.

The best thing about French football is the Coupe de France, where overseas clubs can qualify to play in the early rounds, leading to some truly huge trips that would even make Wick Academy wince: 2018 AS Dragon of Tahiti did a 30,000 km round trip to lose 2-0 to Versailles 78. Last year JS Saint-Pierroise from Réunion made it to the Round of 32, only going out to SAS Épinal after extra time, plus this year Club Fransicain went out in the same round 5-0 to Angers. Amateur clubs can volunteer to be entered in the draw against overseas teams with expenses covers by the FFF.

*Only the third level National is truly national. National 2 has four regional divisions and National 3 has 12!

Get clubs from Gibraltar and the Falklands into the FA cup, IMO 

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