Football before kick-off: how competitions work and what 1X2 means
Football is a team sport in which two sides of up to eleven players each, one of them the goalkeeper, try to score more goals than the opponent. A match consists of two equal halves of 45 minutes, and in each half the referee adds on the playing time lost during it: this is additional time.
The team that scores more goals wins. If both sides score the same number of goals, or neither scores at all, the match ends in a draw, so a draw stands next to a win for either team as a possible result.
Leagues, knockout ties and national teams
When the rules of a competition require a winner, a drawn match can be decided by extra time, two equal periods of no more than 15 minutes each, by a penalty shoot-out after the match, or by both. The UEFA Champions League and the CAF Champions League are club competitions in which a league or group phase leads into knockout rounds; the Africa Cup of Nations is played by national teams. The table below sets out how each competition works and when it is played.
Competition | How it is played | Key dates |
|---|---|---|
20 clubs, each meeting every other club home and away, 380 matches in a season; three points for a win, one for a draw, none for a defeat; the bottom three are relegated to the EFL Championship | 2026/27 season from Friday 21 August 2026 to Sunday 30 May 2027 | |
league phase with 36 clubs in one table, each facing eight different opponents, four at home and four away; places 1-8 go straight to the round of 16, places 9-24 into the knockout phase play-offs | league phase until 27 January 2027; final on Saturday 5 June 2027 at the Estadio Metropolitano in Madrid | |
six-matchday group stage for 16 clubs, the winners of the second preliminary round | groups from 27-29 November 2026 to 22-24 January 2027; quarter-finals in February and March, semi-finals in April, final between 9 and 31 May 2027 | |
finals for 24 national teams in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania | 19 June to 17 July 2027 |
Places at those finals are won in qualifiers for 48 national teams split into 12 groups of four; the three co-hosts, Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania, play in the qualifiers too, but their places at the finals are already guaranteed.
What 1X2 means
The 1X2 market gives each possible result of a match its own sign: “1” is a win for the team named first, “X” is a draw and “2” is a win for the team named second.
The numbers follow the order in which the teams are named in the fixture, so check which side is listed first before picking a sign.
Sudan at the Africa Cup of Nations
Sudan is one of the four founding members of the Confederation of African Football (CAF), together with Egypt, Ethiopia and South Africa; CAF was formally established in Khartoum on 8 February 1957. In the same month the city hosted the first Africa Cup of Nations, played by three teams, Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia, and won by Egypt.
Sudan's own title followed in 1970 on home soil: in the final, played in Khartoum on 16 February 1970, the team beat Ghana 1-0. It remains the country's only Africa Cup of Nations title. The national team is known as the Falcons of Jediane.
Pre-match and live betting
1xBet takes football bets before and during a match:
before kick-off, as pre-match betting (Line), through the Sports section;
once play is under way, as live betting (Live), on the in-play football page.