With so many cups in soccer, it's understandable that the casual fan will get confused and wonder which one is more important. So I'll try and help you out...

INTERNATIONAL SOCCER

1. World Cup (open to teams from all over the world)
2. Euro (open to European teams)
3. Copa America (open to South American teams)

There are others, but these are the big three that you'd want to pay attention to. Actually, I'd even go as far as to say that you should only really pay attention to the top 2... with Copa America, you're really going out of your way to find out info and maybe even catch some games so you're now becoming more than just a casual fan.

CLUB SOCCER

1. UEFA Champions League
This is Europe's version of the "World Cup" if you will. Only the best of the best can compete for this trophy. It's open to most of the champions from each countries domestic league, and depending how talented a country is, you can get more than one entry. For example, in Portugal the top two teams receive an automatic birth into Champions League with the third place team earning a bye into the final qualifying stage for Champions League.

2. UEFA Cup
While the best compete for the Champions League, the "best of the rest" will compete for the UEFA Cup. What's interesting about this is that in Champions League, there are four teams per group in the opening round. The two teams in each group that fail to advance to the next round in Champions League automatically drop down to the UEFA Cup to compete there. So again, pretty good quality of soccer, just not as prestigious as Champions League.

3. FA Cup
While every country has a domestic league and a domestic championship tournament... unarguably, England's FA Cup is the one that gets the most attention has the most prestige attached to it. Only teams registered to play in England can play for this trophy, in other words about 700 teams play in order to win this trophy. As such, many consider it a bigger honour to win the FA Cup than it is to win the English Premier League Championship.

That's basically the best of the best right there...

I guess to clarify just a bit, International refers to national teams and Club refers to individual teams. And FIFA is international governing body.

Under Club competition, I would add Copa Libradores, which is South America's UEFA Champions League. The past two years the Libradores winner went on to win the Club World Championship in Japan. In 2005, Sao Paulo (Brazil) beat Liverpool (England) & in 2006 Internacional (Brazil) beat Barcelona (Spain). I wouldn't put the Club World Championships up there but I think it's a fun competition. Potentially, a MLS team could play in the same tournament as Barcelona or Chelsea. Also, it was just announced that DC United is playing in the Copa Sudamerica which is equivalent to the UEFA Cup in South America. Their third place finish in the CONCACAF Champions Cup earlier this year opened them up to an invitation.

There are two competitions this summer that the US National team will participate. The Gold Cup which is equivalent to the Euros. National teams from CONCACAF (North & Central America plus the Caribbean region) play for a chance to advance to the FIFA Confederations Cup in South Africa in 2009 - a World Cup precursor. The US is the defending champions. The second competition which was mentioned by Enigma is the Copa America. All the South American teams play for the cup plus two invitees, the US and Mexico. Our first match there will be June 28th. We play Argentina. Colombia and Paraguay are also in our group. Mexico plays Brazil on the 27th. Venezuela is hosting so it could prove more difficult for the Americans.

Enigma, I know your goal was to make things less confusing. I hope I didn't counter your work.

Nah you added more info which was great! I just want to clarify that while the Gold Cup is the equivilant of Euro... it's only equivilant as far as the type of the premise behind it. Based on competition at all, it doesn't come close to Euro haha.

If Mexico gets by upstart Guadaloupe tonight and USA manages to stop a surging Canada, we could se another chapter in the ongoing rivalry between USA and Mexico for the Gold Cup of CONCACAF.

Niether game is a given despite Mexico's superiority and the USA's undefeated string in the Cup race (with no PA's until Panama).

Should be interesting.

GO CANADA GO!

Heck we've moved from off the charts down in the 100+ ranking range to be ranked in the top 60 again in FIFA's monthly rankings. A win tonight would move us up a few more notches.

It is fun to be a soccer fan in Canada again. Between the unexpected success in this tournament. To the overwhelming and incredible fan reaction to toronto's entry in the MLS and with over 900,000 tickets now sold up here for next months FIFA Under 20 World Cup. Soccer is suddenly 'in' up here.

We wuz robbed! Canada got jobbed in the Gold Cup semi-final in Chicago last night. Canada had scored the tying goal in the dying seconds of added time only to have the goal waived off with an incredibly wrong offside call. TV replays clearly showed the goal should have counted.
http://www.thestar.com/Sports/article/228329

And with the Americans down a man - having just minutes before having a player red carded - there is little doubt that Canada would have had a distinct advantage in overtime.

If you read the full story you will note it is not the first time that official robbed Canada. What a bitter way to end a very successful tournament.

I don't know if it's against international rules officiating ethics, but some were taking issue that the referee was mexican and Mexico was involved in the other semifinal.

I figure if he wanted to help Mexico he would try and help Canada win.

Still it's true that when a referee comes from a country involved in the other semifinal that could bring up issues of bias.