The FA Cup Has As Much Real Magic As the Harry Potter Omnibus


FA Cup Third Round weekend is supposed to be one of those blue riband dates on the calendar where the whole of Britain puts down the carrots they’re chopping and looks in golden-eyed wonder at the spectacle. No coincidence, then, that nobody gives a flying turd about the competition until the Premier League and Championship teams get involved. It’s the weekend where sixty thousand extra folk decide they support Stockport just because Middlesbrough are rolling into town.

This weekend has been no different, really. A seismic shock on the scale of Yellowstone Park having a mardy was registered in Manchester when Championship side Nottingham Forest tonked soon-to-be Championship side Citeh. Stoke took their recent crap form and exposed it to Hartlepool, much to the disgust of Jeff Stelling’s dry cleaner. Chelsea failed to distinguish between Inter Milan and Southend. Next year, it’ll be the same, just in different hues.

But because some big boys followed the strident laws of probability and lost on crap grounds on pitches with the viscosity of Greenland’s motorways, we are yet again asked to consider the ‘magic’ of the FA Cup. A competition where if you’re really lucky, a TV camera might turn up for the day. Where if you beat Everton, you might get to get knocked out by Arsenal a fortnight later.

Don’t get me wrong. I absolutely love the FA Cup. But I also love the strawberry milkshakes at Burger King. I like it because it’s a treat, a game against opposition that I wouldn’t ever watch normally because in my epicurean delight, I prefer the Premier League and its perfect pitches.  I would love my team to win the trophy but I don’t make the mistake that they will suddenly become pretenders to the crown of European football as they negotiate a minimum of eight games against opposition made up of ex non-league footballers.

Many people complain that the FA Cup has been devalued ever since Manchester United decided to do one and spend their early January being humiliated in Brazil. But this misses the point that the FA Cup lost its status as the world’s most-envied competition through a combination of whoremongering sponsorship, European indifference and Sky razzmatazz. Ever since the advent of the Premier League, the FA Cup has been fighting a losing battle for interest. Compare the gates of this weekend to the quarter finals, say. I estimate they’ll drop by at least a quarter as Liverpool square off against Wolves, for example.

The only real pleasure the FA Cup has given us in the past decade and a half is the alarmingly regular sight of a big gun falling on their overpaid arses. Which means that most people watch the competition out of sour grapes. Why get fussed at another final containing Chelsea when you can spend the weekend hoping West Brom get knocked out to the South Devon Milkman’s Select XI?

Yeah, lower league fans can complain and bang on about generated financial windfalls and the brief glory of their honest lads but watch any of the televised ties this weekend where there was more half a division between the teams and all the home supporters were interested in were haranguing the millionaires from the top divisions. There’s your best chance of enjoyment – hoping your chaps kick the crap out of an England player’s legs.

So as far as I’m prepared to concede, the FA Cup is good for two things – keeping League Two clubs going for the next six months and laughing at people from outside your home county. Not a lot of magic there, unless your live your life like the woodsmen in Deliverance. Think how many notable FA Cup memories are “giant-killings” rather than finals. People talk about the magic of the cup as if every game’s a sparkler. Never mind the majority of the last twenty finals were so dull they seemed to feature Fulham v Fulham Reserves.

The FA Cup doesn’t represent proper magic. It represents cash and jeering humiliation. But then again, pretty much any of the variety shows that are inexplicably popular on Saturday telly are geared towards that, so should we really be surprised that the FA Cup really means as much as an evening with Simon Cowell? The competition’s a nineteenth century idea in a twenty-first century world, which is why treating it like a holy relic seems unnecessary, unsightly and faintly silly.

Chris Stanley

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