When I think of the FA Cup, I think of giant killings and I think of grainy footage of FA Cup legends and vintage games. Ricky Villa, Bert Trautmann, Ronnie Radford, Steven Gerrard.
These are the things that create the ‘magic of the FA Cup’, a competition where the smallest teams in the country get to play alongside clubs from the football league, teams made up of professionals, and some lucky clubs get the tie of a lifetime and pit themselves against some of the best players in the world.
This year we’ve had plenty of iconic moments. Bradford coming back from 2-0 down at Stamford Bridge to beat Chelsea stands out chiefly amongst them. They’re in the hat for the Semi-Finals and are only a home game against Championship opposition away from booking their place at a Wembley semi-final. Y
eovil and Cambridge have both had home ties against Manchester United, and we’ve had some less romantic but still noteworthy giant killings where non-league teams have beaten league sides.
But as we reflect on the semi-final draw, we see Reading and Blackburn of the Championship, Bradford of League One, Aston Villa, Arsenal and Liverpool all there. Isn’t that exactly what we mean when we talk about the ‘magic of the cup’? The big sides are still there competing and the minnows are still there with them, trading blow for blow.
Well, yes and no. In one sense that’s exactly what we mean. In another, it’s symptomatic of an ailing competition.
In one sense, we do all love to see the minnows still in the cup at this stage of the season. It shows us that anything is possible in football, and most people will usually love to see the underdog prevail.
But this only works if the big teams actually want to win the competition, if they actually take it seriously.
The three Premier League clubs still in the competition have won the cup a combined 25 times, they are also three of the top five in the list of teams to have won the most league titles. So these are teams of pedigree, and they are each taking the cup seriously this time around.
Yet ask any one of those clubs’ fans if they’ve had a good season so far and they’d have to say no. They might have something positive to point to, especially Liverpool fans with their team’s form since December, but as a stand-alone season this one has been poor for all of these big clubs.
The FA Cup is really the last hope for all of them to turn a bad season into a good one.
The teams who are already having good seasons don’t prioritise the FA Cup, they prioritise the league and European competitions over and above it. And only when their season is on the ropes do they look to the FA Cup to become the saviour for their season.
Few Chelsea fans were heartbroken when they were dumped out by Bradford. Sure, they’d have liked to have won the cup, but they saw bigger and brighter things ahead in the league and Champions League and didn’t want the extra games to get in the way of these bigger prizes. I wonder if they wish they’d have maintained that lead against Bradford now?
Arsenal had nothing else last year when the cup became their everything. When they won, their season turned into a positive one, and perhaps even saved Arsene Wenger’s job. The year before, Manchester City were nowhere in the league and out of Europe too, so the cup was their last hope, and that’s when they poured their souls into it. Roberto Mancini was even sacked after failing to land it.
In 2012, Chelsea won the FA Cup and Champions League double, but six weeks before their cup wins they seemed in turmoil and disarray. But two (possibly lucky) cup wins saved their season again.
The FA Cup will only be a magical competition when the big teams take it seriously from the beginning, and not just as a panacea to save their dying seasons. Only then will the lower league team actually be competing with a big team who are interested in winning and not just playing in a game that they see as a distraction.
It’s only a good competition when everyone takes it seriously – because that’s when the magic happens.
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