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Choosing a format for a football tournament

Pick one of the three football templates, answer the questions it asks, and Scoryboard builds your groups and your fixture list.

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Written by Maab Saleem

This article covers Football tournaments. Other Sports tournaments work exactly the same way. Padel is different and has its own articles.

The Format tab is where a tournament stops being a name and a date and becomes a schedule. Saving here creates the groups and generates every fixture, so do it once your teams are in.

Before you start

Add your teams first, on the Participants tab. You can save a format without them, but the numbers you enter here have to match the number of teams you end up with.

Choose a template

Open the tournament, then Format. A football tournament offers three templates. Padel has its own set, with its own questions about players, courts and scoring.

The Choose Format screen with three template cards: Group phase only, Knockout phase only, and Group and knockout phase.

  • Group phase only - round-robin. Everyone plays inside their group and the table decides it.

  • Knockout phase only - straight elimination from the first match.

  • Group & knockout phase - groups first, then the top teams go into a bracket.

Select one. The questions underneath change to match.

The Group phase only card selected and outlined.

Group phase only

  1. Enter How many groups do you want to create?

    The format fields with the number of groups set to 2 and outlined.

  2. Enter How many teams are there in each group?

    The format fields with teams per group set to 4 and outlined, and Encounters filled in automatically.

  3. Choose Encounters - how many times each team plays the others in its group. The list stays empty until the two fields above it are filled in.

    The Encounters list open, showing Play all teams in pool once selected, then 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7.

  4. Decide what happens to overflow. Yes pushes matches that will not fit onto the next day. No keeps them on the tournament date with no start time.

    The overflow question outlined, with Yes and No buttons and Yes selected.

The other two templates

Knockout phase only asks one question: how many teams go into the bracket.

The Knockout phase only card selected and outlined, with a single question - how many teams proceed to knockout.

Group & knockout phase asks both sets: the group questions, then how many teams come out of the groups and into the bracket.

The Group and knockout phase card selected and outlined, showing both the group fields and the knockout field.

What you will see

Select Save. Scoryboard creates the phase, splits your teams into groups, and generates the fixtures.

The Format tab after saving, showing a Group Phase with Group A and Group B and the teams in each.

The format now appears under the tournament's name everywhere it is listed.

If it does not work

  • "8 teams cannot be split into 3 equal groups." The number of teams has to divide by the number of groups. Scoryboard lists the group counts that would work - pick one of those.

  • "With 2 groups and 8 teams, each group must have 4 teams." Teams per group is not a free choice. It is the number of teams divided by the number of groups.

  • Encounters will not open. Fill in the number of groups and the teams per group first. Until both are set there is nothing for it to offer.

  • Out of range. You can have 1 to 64 groups, 2 to 64 teams in each, and 1 to 128 matches per team.

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