Founded | 2014 |
---|---|
Region | Australia |
Number of teams | 704 (2016) |
Current champions |
Melbourne City (1st title) |
Most successful club(s) |
Adelaide United Melbourne City Melbourne Victory (1 title) |
Television broadcasters | Fox Sports |
Website | FFA Cup |
2017 FFA Cup |
The Football Federation Australia Cup, commonly known as the FFA Cup, is the main national soccer knockout cup competition in Australia. The annual competition is organised by and named after Football Federation Australia. It features all the teams from the top division, the A-League, as well as from lower tiers in the Australian leagues, including the National Premier Leagues. Teams enter the competition in progressional stages, with qualifying rounds used to determine which lower division teams eventually join those from the A-League in later stages of the cup. It is currently sponsored by the Westfield Group and thus officially known as the Westfield FFA Cup.
Adelaide United, Melbourne Victory and Melbourne City have won one title each. The current champions are Melbourne City after defeating Sydney FC in 2016.
Australia has a long history of regional and state-based knockout cup competitions. However, a sustainable national knockout cup competition that encompassed clubs on all levels of Australian league system has been hard to realise. Prior to the FFA Cup, the first and only Australian national knockout tournament was the Australia Cup. The Australia Cup was founded in 1962 but was abolished in 1968 after just seven seasons of competition. In 1977 a knockout competition was founded to run in parallel with the now defunct National Soccer League (NSL). The NSL Cup involved Australian association football clubs competing in the then top-flight NSL and limited clubs from state based competitions. The NSL Cup ceased after the 1996-97 tournament. An A-League Pre-Season Challenge Cup competition ran between 2005-2008 but involved only the teams from the A-League and was not a traditional knockout format.