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The playoffs, play-offs, postseason or finals of a sports league are a competition played after the regular season by the top competitors to determine the league champion or a similar accolade. Depending on the league, the playoffs may be either a single game, a series of games, or a tournament, and may use a single-elimination system or one of several other different playoff formats. Playoff, in regard to international fixtures, is to qualify or progress to the next round of a competition or tournament.
A tournament is a competition involving at least three competitors, all participating in a sport or game. More specifically, the term may be used in either of two overlapping senses:
- One or more competitions held at a single venue and concentrated into a relatively short time interval.
- A competition involving a number of matches, each involving a subset of the competitors, with the overall tournament winner determined based on the combined results of these individual matches. These are common in those sports and games where each match must involve a small number of competitors: often precisely two, as in most team sports, racket sports and combat sports, many card games and board games, and many forms of competitive debating. Such tournaments allow large numbers to compete against each other in spite of the restriction on numbers in a single match.
In an organized sports league, a typical season is the portion of one year in which regulated games of the sport are in session: for example, in Major League Baseball the season lasts approximately from the last week of March to the last week of September. In other team sports, like association football or basketball, it is generally from August or September to May although in some countries - such as Northern Europe or East Asia - the season starts in the spring and finishes in autumn, mainly due to weather conditions encountered during the winter.
PFC Lokomotiv Plovdiv is a Bulgarian professional association football club, based in Plovdiv, that competes in the country's primary football competition, the First League. Lokomotiv's home ground is Stadion Lokomotiv which is situated in Lauta Park, in the south of the city, and has a capacity of 10,000 spectators.
There are a number of formats used in various levels of competition in sports and games to determine an overall champion. Some of the most common are the single elimination, the best-of- series, the total points series more commonly known as on aggregate, and the round-robin tournament.
The First Professional Football League, also known as the Bulgarian First League or Parva liga, currently known as the efbet League for sponsorship reasons, is a professional association football league, located at the top of the Bulgarian football league system. Contested by 14 teams, it operates on a system of promotion and relegation with the Second Professional Football League.
The Bulgarian Cup is a Bulgarian annual football competition. It is the country's main cup competition and all officially registered Bulgarian football teams take part in it.
Football is the most popular sport in Cape Verde. The league is divided into eleven divisions, of which seven of them are singles and two islands, Santiago and Santo Antão has two zones since 2000. The football association is a federation which is known as the Cape Verdean Football Federation, it became affiliated with CAF in 1986 and later with FIFA in 2001.
Association football commonly referred to as football or Soccer, is the team sport with the highest level of participation in the Republic of Ireland.
The Trinidad and Tobago FA Trophy, is the premier knockout tournament for teams in Trinidad and Tobago that is open to all clubs affiliated with the Trinidad and Tobago Football Association. The FA Trophy is the oldest football competition in Trinidad and Tobago, dating back to 1927 when Shamrock claimed the inaugural trophy. Since the competition involves clubs of all standards playing against each other, there is the possibility for 'giant-killers' from the lower divisions of eliminating top clubs from the tournament and even theoretically win the trophy, although lower division teams rarely reach the final.
The NBA playoffs are an annual best-of-seven elimination tournament held after the National Basketball Association (NBA)’s regular season to determine the league's champion.
The Turkish Football Championship was a top-level football competition in Turkey. It was the first nationwide championship in Turkish football history. The championship was organised by the Turkish Football Federation. The tournament system was based on a knockout competition, contested between the winners of each of the country's regional leagues.
The National Division or National League was a top-level football competition organised by the Turkish Football Federation, including the most successful teams from Istanbul, Ankara, and İzmir in Turkey. It was the first national league in Turkish football history. The league was played from 1937 to 1950.
The Northern German football championship, operated by the Northern German Football Association (German: Norddeutscher Fußball-Verband , was the highest association football competition in Northern Germany, in the Prussian provinces of Schleswig-Holstein and Hanover and the German states of Hamburg, Lübeck, Mecklenburg-Schwerin, Mecklenburg-Strelitz, Oldenburg, Bremen and the Duchy of Brunswick. The regional associations, including the NFV, were dissolved in 1933 and the competition was not held again until 1946.
The Republic Football Championship was a national football competition in Bulgaria, successor of the State Championship. It was organised for only four years between 1945 and 1948. After 1948 it was reorganised as a Republic Football Group.
The Taça de Portugal is an annual association football competition and the premier knockout tournament in Portuguese football. For sponsorship reasons, it has been known as Taça de Portugal Placard as of the 2015–16 season. Organised by the Portuguese Football Federation since it was first held in 1938, the competition is open to professional and amateur clubs from the top-four league divisions. Matches are played from August–September to May–June, and the final is traditionally held at the Estádio Nacional in Oeiras, near Lisbon. The winners qualify for the Supertaça Cândido de Oliveira and the UEFA Europa League.
Today, the German football league system consists refers to a series of hierarchically interconnected leagues for association football clubs in Germany, in which all leagues are bound together by the principle of promotion and relegation. As of 2015, the league systems spans up to 14 levels and consists of over 2,300 divisions in total, that stands at the end of a development starting around the year 1900 with different district leagues, was then organized over decades on a regional basis and saw the first edition of a nationwide league as late as 1963.
Football is the most popular sport in Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria. Sofia was the first city in the country to have an organized football championship, which was created in 1921. Teams from Sofia have been crowned national champions on 70 occasions in the 90 seasons between 1924 and 2013. As of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, there are four teams from Sofia which have been constant participants in the top national division – Levski, CSKA, Slavia and Lokomotiv. All four have managed to reach the latter stages of European competitions on several occasions, the best of which are CSKA's two European Cup semi-finals in 1967 and 1982, and Slavia's Cup Winners' Cup semi-final in 1967.
References
- Bulgarian-football.com - State Championship. Retrieved 2009-05-26.