The rules for the 17th edition are the same as those for the 16th edition, which has just concluded with Spain’s victory.
The deadline for playing your four qualifying matches in the first phase is 13 September.

The list of the 16 qualifiers will therefore be published on Monday 14 September (a supplementary list of four federations ranked 17th to 20th will also be published, and the four federations on this list will be placed on a waiting list in the event that any of the 16 qualified federations do not wish to enter the final phase draw.
On this point, I would like to remind you that this competition is optional and reserved solely for coaches who are motivated by the competition and wish to challenge one another.

Any federation that has played, or even simply scheduled, more than four matches by 13 September will not be eligible for qualification,......nor will any federation that has played fewer than four matches but has scheduled a match to be played after 13 September, as such scheduling would prevent the manual scheduling of matches for the second phase.
There will be no exceptions to this rule.

To put it plainly, if you wish to take part in the second phase of the competition, do not schedule any matches beyond 13 September and wait patiently for the manual scheduling; otherwise, you will not be included in the list of qualified federations.

I would like to remind you that the Federation module still contains a few residual bugs and that, unfortunately, we have no choice but to accept them and sometimes face the consequences in terms of the rules.
If you encounter any problems, please report them to me; I am here to make decisions in consultation with the admins to ensure that no one is disadvantaged.

Finally, I would like to remind you that the competition’s prize money is reserved solely for participants who actually take part in the second phase, in accordance with a scale that remains unchanged from the edition that has just ended, namely:
3 M to all qualifiers present in the final draw + 1 M per win in the second phase + prizes for those who make it onto the podium, namely: 12 M to the winner, 5 M to the runner-up and 3 M to the winner of the third-place play-off.

Good luck to all the managers – the challenge of succeeding Spain is now on :)