- Mar 18, 2005
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No it isn't. The final is a one match sudden death game, that makes the whole competition a "knock out cup competition". A chain is as strong as it's weakest link.
Knockout competitioin definition - a competition in which only the winners of each stage play in the next stage, until one competitor or team is the final winner:
So having a group stage means it isn't a knock out competition. Completely irrelevant to the point anyway and I'm not going to get the point sidetracked by pathetic semantics.