International Champions Cup Betting Tips
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International Champions Cup
The International Champions Cup (ICC) is an annual club football exhibition competition that features club teams from Europe playing pre-season friendly matches.
The competition was founded in 2013 and was originally held in the United States and Canada, but in the years since its inception it has been hosted in China, Australia, Mexico and across Europe.
The ICC replaced the World Football Challenge, which had a more even distribution of European and American-based teams.
The format of the competition has changed in each edition, with subsequent tournaments after the first having different numbers of teams in the three different locations.
In the first edition in 2013, the participants were designated as part an "Eastern" and a "Western" group based on the location of their group stage matches. The groups were not played as a round-robin; rather, the winners of the first-round matches played each other in the second round, and the first-round losers also played each other in the second round.
The two teams with two wins from the first two matches advanced to the final, while the other three teams of each group were then ranked based on their records in the two matches played. A match won in regulation time counted for two points, with one point awarded if the match was decided on penalties.
The traditional methods of ranking – goal difference, goals scored, etc – determined order in the event of two teams having the same points total. After the teams in each group had been ranked, they were paired against their opposite number from the other group, second playing second, third playing third, fourth playing fourth, with the results of these final matches determining a definitive placing for each team, from first place to eighth.
In the 2014 season, this slightly awkward system was done away with, as the teams were separated into non-geographical groups and playing a round-robin format. After each team has played three games, the top-placed team from each group contested a final to determine the overall winner.
During the 2014 tournament, a match between Manchester United and Real Madrid at Michigan Stadium set the all-time record for attendance at a football game in the United States with 109,318 spectators.
Barcelona won in 2017 after defeating Manchester City to win the competition for Europe and North America, while Inter Milan overcame Bayern Munich to claim the tournament in Singapore.
A total of 18 teams participated in the 2018 tournament across 22 venues in the United States, Europe and Singapore.
Recent International Champions Cup North America and Europe Winners and Runners-Up
Year | Winners | Runners-Up |
|---|---|---|
| 2017 | Barcelona | Manchester City |
| 2016 | Paris Saint Germain | Liverpool |
| 2015 | Paris Saint Germain | New York Red Bulls |
| 2014 | Manchester United | Liverpool |
| 2013 | Real Madrid | Chelsea |
Recent International Champions Cup Worldwide Winners and Runners-Up
| Year | Winners | Runners-Up |
|---|---|---|
| 2020 | ||
| 2019 | Benfica | Atletico Madrid |
| 2018 | Tottenham Hotspur | Borussia Dortmund |
