A knockout bracket is single-elimination: win and you advance, lose and you are out. Teams are paired into ties, the winners move on to meet other winners, and the field halves each round — last 16, quarter-finals, semi-finals, final — until one team is left. Because there are no second chances, a single bad day can end a season, which is what gives cup competitions their drama.
Brackets are usually seeded so the strongest teams are placed apart and cannot meet until the later rounds. Seeding is based on ranking or league position; the aim is to keep the best matchups for the climax and to avoid a top team being eliminated early by another top team. An unseeded team that beats a seeded one is the classic “upset” the format is built to allow.
A tie can be a single match or two legs (home and away) with the aggregate score deciding it. If a knockout match is level when normal time ends, the rules step in — extra time, and if still level, a penalty shootout or equivalent — because a bracket needs exactly one winner to advance. There is no “draw” outcome the way a league has.
Reading a bracket, you trace a path: follow a team from its opening tie rightward through each round to the final, and you can see exactly what it must win to lift the trophy. Compared with a league table, the bracket is unforgiving — position is earned not by accumulated points but by surviving every round.