Wednesday 24 March 2010

A new Anglo Scottish cup

OK I have improved on my idea of Great Britain Cup.
Here is my new idea for a football tournament between Scottish, English and Welsh sides.
A cup between the Scottish and English league sides called the Anglo Scottish cup. This would be a great soccer trophy idea.
The Competitors
1. The top 20 teams in Scottish league who have not qualified for Europe.
2. The English League one and League two teams. That is 48 sides.


This equals 68 teams.
So 17 groups of 4.

The format.
Group stage.
20 Groups of 4, played home and away. Each group must have one atleast one Scottish side.
Knockout stage
The top teams from each group qualify for the last 32. As you can tell that is only 17 teams. As you can see 15 teams are still needed for the rest of the last 32. So then the best 15 runners up go through to next round. There is then a last 32, a last, 16, a Quarter Final, Semi - Final and then a final. All one leg each.

This would be a fun great tournament, with lots of interesting teams to see.
It would be a great replacement for European football something that most English league one and two sides can realistically never aim for. This is also true of many Scottish league sides.
Benefit for Scottish sides
Scottish sides would benefit enormously in getting to play other bigger sides, from a different league. Plus they would be able to gain experience of European style tournament. Attendances in the old Anglo Scottish cup for Scottish English matches were very high higher than normal league matches.

Benefits for English sides
The opportunity to play different teams form other countries. Many teams in England will pay the same sides over and over again. this gives them some different set of teams to play. Plus English sides used to get very good attendances in the Anglo Scottish cup.

This would have much chance as the football league trophy of having a good chance.

Timing of the trophy
I would play the group stages in late summer to mid autumn. I would not play the matches in winter or late autumn as you do not want to have team traveling up from the South of England 400 miles to find the game has been snowed off. Then the knockout stages could happen from mid spring to summer.
The teams in this trophy would not be in European matches. So the games could played until the end of the season.


A typical group to be expected could be
Oldham Athletic
Lincoln City
Hartlepool
Falkirk
or
Milton Keynes Dons
Northampton Town
Queen of the South
Burton Alboin

A glamour draw could be
Leeds United
Norwich City
Hibernian
Northampton Town
Change the final destination each year.
The trophy final could be held in England and Scotland in turn each year.
The final could be played at Hampden (or Murrayfield, Celtic Park or Ibrox) the Millennium stadium (In Wales) and Wembley (Or Old Trafford, or another big English ground) in turn.

This would be a great fun trophy with the opportunity to play other sides from other countries to play in major stadiums in a final.
My old idea was the Great Britain Cup. I realise that it might be embarrassing for sides to lose to Welsh league sides (until the bigger sides join their league), but I have another idea for Welsh sides.

great british cup