Sport
THE FA CUP – DOES IT MATTER ANYMORE?
The third round of the FA Cup was once the one of the biggest dates in the English sporting calendar, but does it really matter any more to the big clubs?
The riches on offer from the Premier League and Champions League has meant that the oldest cup competition with such a glorious history has become a secondary prize for a lot of the country’s biggest clubs.
It will be interesting to see after such a busy festive schedule, when managers up and down the land were complaining of fatigute, what line-ups the majority of the Premier League sides field this weekend.
The teams contesting the Premier League title will be looking to give some of their star names a much-needed breather and will give fringe players and exciting young prospects the chance to impress, while those sides down at the wrong end of the table will put survival ahead of a possible long cup run on their priority list.
The problem for Premier League clubs is that money is more important than trophies.
Finishing in the top four and Champions League qualification trumps winning the FA Cup and surviving in the top flight with all the millions at stake is preferable to going all the way to Wembley.
There is more incentive for a club to finish in the top four and secure a Champions League spot the following year than to compete for the FA Cup.
Take for instance last season’s meeting between Chelsea and Manchester City at Stamford Bridge – a standout tie between two of English football’s biggest clubs – City opted to field a weakened side made up of six teenagers because they had a Champions League tie the following midweek and a Capital One Cup final against Liverpool the nex weekend.
While on the flip side teams who do take the cup seriously run the risk of doing what Wigan did in the 2012/13 season who by going all the way to lift the trophy saw their league form suffer and ended up suffering relegation just days after beating Manchester City in one of the competition’s biggest upsets.
As a result of some teams not taking the FA Cup seriously some of the fans don’t either and that could explain why we are likely to see empty seats at some stadiums this weekend when normally they are packed to the rafters for Premier League encounters.
Even the TV companies must take some blame for the demise of the FA Cup as once when the TV schedule was built around the biggest games now the game is scheduled to fit in with the TV with ties now being played on a Friday night and the final itself moved from its traditional 3pm kick to a later kick-off time.
Trying telling some of the lower league and non-league clubs that the FA Cup does not matter and you will see the other side of the coin as the early rounds of the competition are like the final itself for some sides who dream of playing against the Premier League’s big boys.
Of course it matters to teams who have no chance of winning the Premier League or getting to the Champions League as at the end of the day a trophy is a trophy and it is a place in the history books.
However, in recent years the FA Cup has seems to have become no longer a priority for England’s top teams and it has become expendable to them.
The FA Cup may conjure up great memories of past games and historic moments, but the fact is that it does not hold the prestige and importance that it once did.
