cup-tied is an adjective, used primarily in association football, to describe a player who is ineligible to play in a knockout cup competition after transferring from another club during that competition. ==application== in virtually all domestic and international club cup competitions, any player who makes an appearance for a club at any stage of the competition is "tied" to that club for all future matches during that season in the same competition. this prevents a wealthy team still in the competition from gaining an unfair advantage by signing talented players from clubs that may have lost out in earlier rounds, in an attempt to increase their cup chances. the rule applies to individual cup competitions, such that a player who plays in the english fa cup, but not the football league cup, for example, is cup-tied only in the former competition. if the player signs for a new club in the same season, he or she is thus eligible for the football league cup, but not the fa cup. uefa club football regulations state that, with very few exceptions, players who play in a european club competition are subsequently cup-tied with respect to all european football for the remainder of the season. the main current exception is the uefa super cup, contested by the winners of the previous seasons uefa champions league and uefa europa league. representing a club in this fixture does not affect a player's eligibility. similarly, cup-tying did not apply in any matches in the now-defunct uefa intertoto cup before the semi-final round. further, as per champions league regulation 17.18, one player per club who would normally be cup-tied can be registered and eligible to play, so long as his previous club did not field him in the same competition, meaning that this player can represent two different clubs in the europa league and champions league. however, if the first club fielded him in the champions league, but would later play in the europa league through finishing third in the group stage, the transferred player is ineligible to play in the europa league. this was the case with alan hutton, who could not play in europe for tottenham hotspur following his former club rangers' entry into the cup. however, if rangers had come 1st, 2nd or 4th in their group, hutton would have been able to play for tottenham. another interesting case came in 2009, when real madrid purchased [[klaas-jan hunt
Association_football_terminology