England as well as many other countries have multiple tournaments ongoing at the same time as their actual league play. In England, the Premier League is a round robin where you play each team in the league twice (once home and once away) and the team with the most points takes home the hardware. It is often anticlimatic at the end of the year as someone usually has it clinched with a few games to go (definitely not always) and there is usually some very important matches at the end of the year with regards to relegation and qualification for other tournaments.

The FA Cup is a tournament in England opened to all professional leagues, so you could be in the 2nd or 3rd or even down to the 10th divisions and get a chance at the hardware. There have been some upsets here and there, but usually a premier league teams wins the FA Cup. It is considered below the level of the Premier League as well as the UEFA Champions League, so sometimes teams down play their best players until the end and upsets do occur. It is cool that sometimes these huge clubs like Man City will play an away game against a lower division team on an awful pitch in front of a rabid (yet small fan base)....think playing in a highschool football stadium sometimes. ESPN has the rights in the US to the FA Cup so you need ESPN to watch them.

There `are other tournaments like the Carabao Cup which are open to teams in the top 4 divisions.

With regards to the Champions League, the top 4 Premier league teams from the previous year qualify for that tournament. There is big big money on the line for that, so you will see some battles between 4th and 5th place to finish 4th. Right now, Liverpool is 4th and I expect they will qualify easily, but if they keep their current form it would be a huge upset if they were not in the Champions League next year. I think CBS has the current rights, but it changes every year, so to watch everything you usually need 3 or more subscriptions.

The Europa League is for the 5th place finishers in the premier league plus 2 teams that win the other tournaments and is the 2nd biggest European tournament. This alone makes the FA Cup a big deal, if you are not going to be in the top 5 in the premier league.