2025/26 Cup Competitions Bookings Model Analysis
I recently did an article analysing bookings during the Club World Cup, and also looked at some of the numbers from major international competitions to try and pick out some trends. You can read that article by clicking Here – I would recommend that one. Writing that inspired me to do a deeper dive into cup competitions, so in this article, I want to explore whether we can draw any parallels between the Club World Cup and domestic cup competitions in general using data over the last few seasons.
The Bookings Model performed the best in domestic cup competitions in terms of win-rate last season, while tournaments fixtures also showed the highest likelihood out of all the competitions to have 0 total cards – there is a lot of potential to exploit these fixtures, so I want to look into them in a bit more detail.
I want to focus specifically on the following competitions:
- FA Cup
- EFL Cup
- Copa del Rey
- Coppa Italia
- Supercopa competitions
FA Cup
The Round of 16 this year saw two games with exactly 0 cards – Villa vs Cardiff and Man City vs Plymouth – both of which ended in comfortable wins for the Premier League side. I mentioned this previously, in these games with a large supremacy difference, they are likely to be a blowout, which could mean a zero-card game.
This trend actually persisted in the 23/24 season, as the RO16 had very few cards – which the table shows above. Over the last 5 years, RO16 games have displayed incredibly low card makeups, which is something to keep an eye on going forward. Progressing to the latter stages of the knockouts, total cards are trending upwards, but remaining low.
High-calibre FA Cup games generally tend to see the most cards brandished, although they have a propensity to go one of two ways – either way over their card line, or way under. Given how low these card totals are over the last 5 years, the FA Cup is certainly a competition to keep a keen eye on, particularly when we get a Premier League side expected to walk through one of the knockout rounds against a lesser opponent.
EFL Cup
In general, the EFL Cup seems to have noticeably higher card totals than the FA Cup, but again they are relatively low. RO16 games tend to be the quietest, but there is a steep increase for the later knockout rounds. Finals in both the EFL Cup and the FA Cup tend to be quiet variable, and difficult to predict – there aren’t really any trends popping out.
The prior assumption of higher supremacy games yielding low card totals doesn’t hold as often in the EFL Cup, although those fixtures are a lot less common. In general, the 21/22 season seems to have very low card totals in the English cup competitions, which might be something to do with it being the first season after Covid? Can’t say for certain, it could well just be an anomaly, but card totals seem to have increased since that season.
Once again, finals have proven to be quite difficult to call with very variable card totals, so they might be fixtures to avoid going forward.
Copa del Rey
Card totals in the Copa del Rey have gone haywire over the last 5 seasons, totals are much higher than that in England. It’s extremely rare to find games with zero or one card shown, even ones which are complete blowouts.
In the last four seasons particularly, card totals have been incredibly high since the 2020/21 Covid season, which makes me want to ignore this competition completely. Rivalry games tend to see a notable uptick in cards, which isn’t so much the case in England, where these matches can often be quite cagey.
Also unlike England, there is no real trend between total cards and the actual stage of the competition – makeups are just high for the cup in general.
Coppa Italia
For some reason, card totals in the Copa Italia during the Covid season were incredibly high – 70 booking points in the final, an average of 50 in the semi finals and 55 in the quarters. However, since then it has calmed down quite a lot.
Interestingly, both Spanish and Italian domestic cups show that RO16 and semi finals have very similar, low card totals, while finals and quarter finals have the most – it’s a down, up, down, up kind of trend.
The Coppa Italia has very similar card total averages to the English League Cup over the last 5 years, while it also resembles the FA Cup in the sense that you do often get quite low card totals when the big teams play each other – almost like these games are very cagey. Again, finals are extremely variable and difficult to predict, but the opportunity to back unders appears to be during semi-finals and RO16 games – keep an eye on those!
Brief Notes on Supercopa
Supercopa games are contested in Spain, Italy, Germany and France, and I’ll briefly run through those four competitions and the numbers over the last 5 seasons.
The Supercopa Espana is usually between Real Madrid and Barcelona in the final, and these games always tend to have higher card makeups. However, semi-final matches tend to be a lot calmer – there has been an average of 52 booking points per game in finals, compared to just 32 in semi-finals. This mini-tournament has been played in Saudi Arabia over the winter break in January – you really would expect the card makeups to be lower than they are.
The Supercopa Italia has changed in format recently to four teams as opposed to two in the last two years. Similar to Spain, finals have had a propensity to land the over, but semi-final games have had a lot less cards (going off just four games). Again, the last 5 editions have been contested in Saudi Arabia, so naturally it’s been a bit less competitive without fans.
The German and French Supercups are decided by just a final, and are therefore very difficult to predict. They are averaging 52 and 44 booking points, respectively, over the last 5 years, but an interesting point is that the French Supercup has seen just 30 and 30 booking points in the last two finals when it was played in January, as opposed to over the summer.
The lesson from looking into Supercopa data – back the unders in semi-finals, and keep an eye on the French final following the change to when it is played.
Circling back to the Club World Cup, the final had 80 booking points, while semi-finals averaged just 30. Again, there was a jump in the quarters to 55 booking points, and a drop in the RO16 to 43.8 booking points – as displayed with the Copa Italia and Copa del Rey.
I’ve also had a look into some other cup competitions, Scottish Cup & League Cup, some Brazilian tournaments, the US Open Cup as well as the intercontinental tournaments across the globe – UEFA Champions League, Copa Libertadores and CONCACAF, and even the Euros and World Cup. I’ll keep these to myself though, just to prevent this article becoming too long.
As always, I appreciate the support on this project! Looking forward to another season of grinding away, starting in a couple of weeks.
