Soccer (or football,or futbol, or fotboll, or association football…) is the world’s game.

If you throw a stone anywhere on the globe, you’re more than likely to come upon a football club, whether a beer league group or a big-time brand. As such, there are a variety of logos and wordmarks which gives every team its own unique sense of identity.

We always fight constantly about who has the best logo design in the world, so we decided to make a super arbitrary list, turn it into a bracket and release it to the world.

Here’s how we did it:

• Premier leagues only (think teams you can play on FIFA 17.)
• Must be FIFA-sanctioned. (This means for instance no USL or NPSL sides.)
• Teams are current as of 2017 (which means some familiar brands may be in a different domestic level than accustomed.)
• Four teams from each league are up for consideration.
• Seeds have been randomly generated by Challonge.
• Groups have been created, with each group at 8 teams. The top 4 in each group advance in the first round. After that, it is knockouts. (This is after all, a soccer tournament.)
• Voting will be done on the bracket and also via Twitter.
• The final four teams have a mini-bracket, including a consolation game.

The selection process was extremely human; it consisted solely of Google searches and in-house deliberation between three contributors. Care was taken to not add too many “big brand” clubs, in order to not ruin the competiive nature of the bracket.

On Monday, we’ll release the 134-team group stage portion of the bracket, which will determine which teams advance to the 67-team “March Madness” style tournament to win it all. Two groups per day will be released on Twitter, while the bracket itself will allow for voting until the Twitter polls come to a close. (You may have to register for a Challonge accoiunt, but it only takes 30 seconds.)

After that, stay tuned for more information.

Trust us when we say it’ll be a fun journey into the soccer culture and how it brands itself.