Football often seems quite tawdry. I don’t know how you feel about the game, but occasionally I switch off Match of the Day and despair.
I get tired of watching the top four eye up the Fulhams and the West Hams as if they were lions sizing up a gazelle. You lose football’s soul in the long grind of the Premier League season – if the league is all about delayed gratification over 38 games, my inner child sometimes takes to screaming for fun now, victory now, champagne now. Something to elicit a true roar of joy from the crowd, rather than simply the satisfied clap and nod of the head which happens at the end of a league win, with 30,000 faces already looking towards the next fixture.
Then, suddenly, it’s January, the third round of the FA Cup happens, and again I am whole. For one weekend a year, anything is possible, and gratification (or otherwise) is immediate. Premier League vs. Conference. David vs. Goliath, with David’s mortgage riding on the outcome. There is purity in the third round. Reputations count for nothing, and careers can be made off the back of one good showing. Any one player, can be as good as the Premier League big boys. Absolutely anyone can dream.
This has been a solid, if not spectacular, year in terms of upsets, and an even better one in terms of justice. The FA Cup has its own brand of karma, which it dishes out to all those who get too big for their boots. Think Malcolm Macdonald and Newcastle United disrespecting Hereford before the embarrassing defeat to Ronnie Radford et al in the replay of 1972. This year’s third round saw Paul Lambert claiming that “managers could do without the Cup if they were being honest”; it seems like just that his Villa side got beaten 2-1 by a struggling Sheffield United, who languish two leagues below them. Manchester United lost to Swansea. West Ham got pummelled by Nottingham Forest. The eternal underdog story makes the FA Cup worth watching every year, and is the ultimate palette cleanser after a year of watching Luis Suarez chew his way through the Premier League.
‘The Cup’ is far more important than just seeing big teams get turned over by smaller ones though. The FA Cup provides the oxygen of publicity which keeps lower league clubs solvent, and gives washed-up players another chance. DJ Campbell, who shone in Yeading’s 2004-5 cup run, made it to the Premier League within weeks. His previous clubs included Billicray, Chesham United and Stevenage Borough, his next was Birmingham City – then in the top division. When York City drew Stoke in 2010, the club managed to break even for the first time in ten years because of the money. Without the FA Cup, many English football clubs would not exist.
Most importantly, the third round is fun whether you are a broadcaster or player, director or fan. Every game could be the game that you remember for the rest of your life. You might just get Manchester United in the draw. You might just score the winner. The third round is the closest thing that football has to the lottery. Everyone gets the chance to dream. How can you fail to love it?
