International Champions Cup
preseason association football tournament
The International Champions Cup (ICC) was an annual club association football (soccer) exhibition competition staged from 2013 to 2019. COVID-19 resulted in the 2020 edition being cancelled. The tournament was later abolished, but the Women's International Champions Cup has continued to play in 2021 and 2022.
Format
The format has changed in each competition. Subsequent tournaments have had different numbers of teams in the three locations.
In the 2013 iteration, 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. The other three teams of each group were then ranked based on their records in the two matches played, with a game won in regulation time counting for two points and a game won on a deciding penalty shootout (no tied games were permitted) counting for one, with traditional methods of ranking – goal difference, goals scored, etc – determining order in case 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.
The public source identifies “International Champions Cup” as preseason association football tournament. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around International, Champions and preseason.
Why this record matters
A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “International Champions Cup”, the useful work is to connect “preseason association football tournament” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.
The record creator and administrative purpose are central evidence, because official documentation reflects both action and institutional priorities. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q16841334. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2013, 2019, 2020 and 2021.
Official terminology may obscure informal participation, dissent or communities documented only indirectly. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.
- Event chronology
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Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “International Champions Cup”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow International Champions Cup primary sources, International Champions Cup archive and International research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
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Questions for further research
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Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “International Champions Cup” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.