| The World Names Cup 2 |
To coincide with the 2006 World Cup, we present the second World Names Cup, a competition of the best names of real professional football clubs from all over the world, in World Cup format. The cup final in May and June of 2006 will consist of 32 teams playing a stage of group competition, with 16 teams advancing to a knock-out, tournament style stage.
Preliminary, or qualifying, competition throughout 2005 and into early 2006 involved 96 teams in four regions of the world and 16 groups. The team which won each group qualified for the Cup tournament. Playoff matches were then held between the second- and third-place teams from each group, with the 16 winners advancing to the Cup competition. A draw was held to match each third-place team against a second-place team at large, meaning not respective of region. (This allowed the chance for regions to place more or less teams than a strict regional proportion.)
For the final Cup competition, there was a draw to place the 32 teams into 8 groups of 4. Each team will play the others in its group (3) in the group stage. The top two teams from each group advance to the knock-out stage, where each losing team is eliminated, until two teams are left for the World Names Cup Final Match, July 1, 2006, to determine the cup winner.
For all group competition, preliminary or Cup tournament, the standard point system in world football is used: 3 points for each win, 1 point for a draw, 0 points for a loss.
Yes, that's right. The teams assembled here are so in name only, because of their names, names chosen for their humorous aspect, inadvertent or otherwise (admittedly from an English-speaking perspective). Though it would be great to see an actual soccer tournament with these teams competing, this is simply a competition of the names themselves, which one is liked best by . . . you.
That is, anyone who cares to participate.
The winners are determined by voting. A ballot on this Web site is used to allow voters to select one team in each match: whichever name you like better for whatever reason. That simple. Ballots are submitted by e-mail.
The match results are determined with a little program that takes the vote tally in each match as a ratio and adds a random factor, in a formula to produce something that looks like a more plausible soccer score. The more votes a team has relative to its opponent, the greater the possible margin of victory for that team.
There are two weeks between matches during preliminary competition, one week during the Cup tournament. All match results will be posted on Saturdays, so the deadline for each voting period in between matches is 8 p.m. PST the Friday before the scheduled match day. You have till then from the time the new ballot is posted, Saturday evening or Sunday, to vote.
You can further participate by providing for future World Names Cups. If you know of any real professional football club with a name you think is humorous or amazing, that you don't see here, send the name too:
Yes, this is the second time the competition has been held. The results of the first cup can be seen here:
All teams that qualified for the first World Names Cup in 2002 were given "automatic" berths in qualifying competition again. The remaining teams from that previous qualifying competition were then considered along with "new" teams, that is, teams that were not considered last time. How poorly the previous competitors fared (how unpopular they were), along with just which names would make the best crop were the criteria used to fill out the 16 groups of six teams each. See the team index from the navigation pane left for the full list of competitors.
Germinal Beerschot was the first World Names Cup winner, and is thus the Cup holder. See "History" left for the first World Names Cup results.