Paul Scholes’ and Thierry Henry’s return to the Third Round fray of this year’s FA Cup (in some sort of association with a well-known American alcoholic drink) was heralded as a return of the magic of the competition. Much though I particularly enjoyed the latter, it wasn’t.
The FA Cup has been destroyed by greed. It is a classic case.
The whole point of the competition was that it wasn’t about money. It was about a straight knock-out competition in which, by quirk of maths (and muddy January pitches), only one team remained unbeaten at the end. Ties went on for months, and that was part of the fun; Wembley was reserved specifically for the final, and that was part of the romance; third round games kicked off at 3pm on the first Saturday of the year, and you left that space in your diary. It was a truly magical competition. It is no more.
The first hint of impending doom was the 1991 semi-final. Leaving aside my biased bitterness about the result, it is worth recording that Tottenham Hotspur and Arsenal had to meet at Wembley “because it would be unfair to send the fans away from London” and “because no other ground was available”. Yet two years later the FA saw fit for a Sheffield derby semi-final to take place at Wembley, 200 miles down the M1, excusing this by saying that it would be unfair for the North London derby (Arsenal and Tottenham Hotspur having been drawn together again) to take place there but not the Sheffield. Ten years after the first effort, when the two North London teams met in the semi-final for a third time, the FA was quite happy to send them 200 miles up the M6 to Old Trafford. The truth is everyone involved in 1991 wanted money in the bank, concern about the fans (as ever) was feigned.
The next year came the true debacle, the introduction of penalty shoot-outs. This was to “help the teams sort out their fixture lists”. Yet since 1992, European competition has seen far more games added to those fixture list that the removal of second replays removed. No one would ever think of reducing the Premier League from 20 teams to aid “fixture lists”. Of course, a second replay against Sheffield United isn’t quite as attractive as a European night against Inter Milan, even if it’s a redundant group game. Money talks, again, but the result is the FA Cup is no longer won by the sole team to remain unbeaten.
Further disaster followed of course. Much though I don’t care to remember it personally, and despite all of the above, perhaps the greatest semi-final ever was played between treble-chasing Manchester United and back-to-back-double-chasing Arsenal in 1999 – a semi-final replay in fact. Beckham bent it, Keane got sent off, Bergkamp missed, Giggs got the ball… a sublime goal to settle a sublime game for the neutral. And remember it was a replay. There have been no semi-final replays since. We have been deprived of such epics because, apparently, we’d much rather see a Europa League game against Wisla Krakow.
The end came in 1999/2000. Holders Manchester United, incredibly, were allowed to withdraw from the competition altogether. To make matters worse, Third Round day was shifted to November, and included in the hat were the surprised players of Darlington – surprised because they had already been knocked out in the second round! Instead of playing Manchester United, therefore, Aston Villa had to knock Darlington out for a second time en route to the last final at the old Wembley – a final made fairly pointless by the fact that the defending and current league champions were not even competing. This showed that other competitions – even daft new “FIFA World Club” competitions invented for the sake of a few quid by an incompetent Swiss who excuses racism – were more important than the oldest Cup in the game. Money – directly from that supposedly big-club competition, semi-directly from United’s and the Premier League’s global marketing efforts, indirectly from the FA’s desire to host the World Cup (that worked out well…) – did all the talking. Forget the romance of the Cup, and forget the home-based fans.
My own team, Arsenal, enjoyed a great run after that – having been “not really knocked out” (aka beaten on penalties) of the “not really the FA Cup” (no Manchester United) in 2000, it reached the final in 2001 and the semi in 2004, while winning the competition in 2002, 2003 and 2005. But it just wasn’t the same. My own reaction to these triumphs was satisfaction of course, but probably on a par with the 1987 League Cup rather than the 1994 Cup-Winners’ Cup – that is how far the competition had fallen.
The media can talk it up all they want – a once magical competition has been destroyed by the FA, by the media, and most of all my money. It is a true lesson in where greed gets us.
I agree totally but how would we change this without imposing restrictions which would fall foul of EU trade regulations?
Here’s a question and it’s something I have wondered for some time: greed has always existed and big business was always smart enough, or so we think, to see a buck being made. So why didn’t sponsorship deals and market forces exist from the very start of the league’s history ? Why wasn’t Danny Blanchflowwr and his generation paid 50 guineas a week for example?
It’s largely because media coverage of games was limited. One and them two TV channels, a medium wave radio channel. No satellite , no bidding, no high rolling auction for games like there is now.
The truth is we cannot change this system. It’s a reflection of our society in general. Football as it stands will collapse into financial mayhem just as our societies have. They wil rebuild and reform from the nebula and reform with worthy aspirations etc just as society will need to but give it 30 or 40 years when all the shennanigans are forgotten or the lore of granddads and greed will return all over again etc. humans are sadly cyclical creatures and we are doomed to repetition only with better technological ways of doing it. La plus la change etc…