Carling Cup

Region: England
Teams: 92
Founded: 1871

The Carling Cup is the second cup competition in the UK after the FA Cup and is also known as the Football League Cup or simply the League Cup. It is limited to member clubs of the top two tiers of English football – clubs belonging to either the elite Premier League (20 clubs) or The Football League (72 clubs).

For many years the competition, launched in 1960, was largely ignored by the big brands of English football but with the promise of a UEFA Europa League berth up for grabs in recent times, the majority of the star performing clubs in the top leagues do take part albeit with weaker or younger sides. This effectively means it carries a lot less clout than the formidable FA Cup contested by hundreds of clubs from all echelons of English football.

The event, contested by 92 clubs, is run on a knock-out basis and follows the following format:

  • A Preliminary round which is used only occasionally and involves clubs that have finished lowest in the English football league system
  • First round – at this stage all teams belonging to The Football League join any winners from the preliminary round unless they are contesting the UEFA Europa League. Teams are divided into two sections – north and south – with half of the teams from both regions seeded for the event. An initial draw to determine whether the seeds play at home or away is followed by a second draw including all the unseeded clubs. Ties for all the early rounds are single match and extra time followed by penalty shoot-outs determine the winner in the case of a draw
  • Second round – At this stage all the clubs belonging to the Premier League enter the campaign, unless they are contesting either the UEFA Champions or Europa Leagues, and go head-to head with the winners of round one.
  • Third round – all clubs contesting the UEFA Champions and Europa Leagues enter at this point and join the second round winners
  • Fourth round and quarter finals – the winners of ties in the third round play each other
  • Semi Finals – The four teams left standing in the last rounds compete in the semis but this time the ties are two-legged with both home and away clashes. An aggregate score is used to ascertain the winners
  • Final – A single match is contested each year at Wembley stadium with extra time and penalty shoot-outs the decider should the 90 minutes end in a draw