Thirty-nine managers entered their clubs into this season’s World Club Cup revival competition, after a couple season’s without a tournament.

For those of you who don’t know, the World Club Cup is a unique to Top 100 friendly schedule based competition, open to all teams, with no restrictions on who can play (unlike the Youth Cup).

A bit of World Club Cup history can be found here.

This season’s competition will be in two parts:

1. Regional Group Stage and Finals
   • Five regions, with a total of 13 groups with 3 teams in each group:
     1. Iberia and South America
     2. Italia
     3. Germany
     4. England
     5. Rest of the World
2. Knockout Stage and Finals
   • World Club Cup for Regional Finalists and best Group runners-up
   • World Club Shield for the best of the rest

Due to the odd number of teams, groups and regions, there will be an odd fixture schedule for the Regional Group Stage, similar to NFL scheduling (i.e., teams also play against teams not in their group).

In summary, all teams in the same region will play the same number of games (either four, or five), before proceeding to regional finals, some of which (but not all) will be over two legs.

The Regional Stage, therefore, will see the finalists play a maximum of eight Wednesday night matches, starting 1 May, and ending 19 June.

The best sixteen teams will then play for the World Club Cup, while the next best sixteen will compete for the World Club Shield.

The Knockout Stage will comprise one-legged rounds of 16 and 8, prior to two-legged semi-finals and finals, a maximum of six Wednesday night games for the finalists, starting 3 July, and ending 7 August.