There are no group stages, so all matches are one-off knockouts (except the two-legged semi-finals) and the draw is in the style of a tennis tournament. Although the first round is on August 5, the Serie A teams will become involved from August 18 and the ‘seeds’ only come into play in December. The Final will be held at the Stadio Olimpico in Rome on May 26, 2013. Below is the Round 1 fixture list with in brackets the side the winners will face in Round 2 on August 12. Potential quarter-finals include Roma-Udinese, Juventus-Milan,Parma-Lazio, Napoli-Bologna and Inter-Palermo.
It does enlarge when you click it. On our side of the bracket, the top seeds are Lazio, Parma & Milan (who we would meet in the quarters). On the other bracket, it is Inter, Napoli, Roma and Udinese. The seeds are as follows: Inter Juve Lazio Udinese Roma Parma Milan Napoli
to me it would look most likely for us to play cagliari first, but you know how unpredictable these things are.
I love how we get to skip to the quarterfinals, it'll surely help in terms of resting our players and not fatiguing them too much. After all, we will be competing in Serie A (of course), Coppa Italia (of course), Supercoppa Italia, and the Champions League. That's a hefty list, the squad could use all the rest they can get. And I agree with Bianconeri10, Cagliari are our most likely opponents. They are definitely beatable. If we advance to the semfinals, our most likely opponent would be Milan. I am up for the challenge, certainly.