Alex Lamper searches for the magic the FA Cup used to have. Villa, Gazza, The Double, Des Walker's OG, Spurs have always been a cup side, but now 4th place is more important.
Where’s the magic gone?
Over the years the FA Cup has provided us with a countless number of magical moments such as Ricky’s goal at Wembley, Gazza’s 40-yarder, Ginola’s mazy run against Barnsley and of course Mickey Thomas’ wonderful free-kick for Wrexham against Woolwich.
In recent years one can’t help but notice these moments have somewhat dried up. The FA Cup is no longer a magical competition, instead it is a graveyard competition that has been ruined by sponsorship, ITV and the Champions League.
There is little hunger or desire to win the FA Cup anymore. The special feeling has disappeared. Real proper giant-killings are now rare, Premier League clubs are making as many as 11 changes to their side for FA Cup games and attendances are poor.
The lure for Champions League football or even just competing in the Premier League and that revenue generates has almost killed the FA Cup; and as a Spurs fan this is extremely disheartening.
We are a club that has a long affinity with this wonderful competition, although we have not won it for 23 years.
[authquoteleft text=”There is little hunger or desire to win the FA Cup anymore. The special feeling has disappeared[/linequote]
As many Spurs fans will not need reminding, we were the only ever non-league winners in 1901, the first team to do the league and cup double in 1961 and the first team to win the cup 8 times by 1991. Our recent failures in the competition (six semi-final defeats) have been nothing short of heartbreaking.
Our shoddy performance at Woolwich in January increased the pain for the fans, however some have taken comfort in the fact that ‘its only the FA Cup’.
Only the FA Cup?
Once the greatest and most-respected cup competition in the world.
That kind of attitude is nothing short of pathetic. Many of us Spurs fans (and our chairman) have sadly become obsessed with the Champions League and an illustrious 4th place finish in the Premier League. There is no trophy for finishing 4th. There is no day out at Wembley.
Finishing 4th isn’t something you’re going to tell your grandchildren about. I’d much rather win the FA Cup than finish 4th and endure a trip to deep Ukraine to watch us get knocked out in the Play-Off round of the Champions League in true Spurs fashion.
Anyone who attended the game at the Emirates earlier this month would have noticed the lack of magic that we associate with the cup. The moment draw was made I could not help but feel a sense of excitement. The possibility of 9,000 Spurs fans at the Emirates, cheap ticket prices, a great atmosphere generated by the Spurs fans singing Ossie’s Dream, the fact that its one-off game in the FA Cup, anything could happen.
How wrong was I?
Woolwich only gave us 5,000 tickets for ‘safety reasons’ which were extortionately priced at £62 each. Disgusting. The FA Cup is the FANS competition. Woolwich exploited this.
[linequote]Many of us Spurs fans (and our chairman) have sadly become obsessed with the Champions League and an illustrious 4th place finish in the Premier League[/linequote]
I still had glimmers of hope though, the atmosphere in the pub before hand and on the concourse was electric from Spurs fans. However, as soon as we all stood next to our padded £62 seats which we didn’t use, all atmosphere was lost.
The uninspiring performance from our players on the pitch showed a lack of respect to the large away following, the North London Derby and the competition itself. The players did not seem to care that much about the FA Cup.
We were outsung and outclassed by the Woolwich supporters which is a rare and embarrassing experience. Walking back to Finsbury Park tube station that day, I could not decide whether I was more distraught that we’d lost the game or that the real magic had been sucked out of the FA Cup for good.
This weekend I found my answer. It was the latter. Everything about the FA Cup this weekend was wrong. Starting off on Friday night at the Emirates. Football on a Friday night.
Do me a favour. Imagine having to make the journey all the way back up to Coventry on a Friday night. When do they think of the fans?
Then we move on to Saturday. I was moved by the distinct lack of coverage of Kidderminster’s trip to Sunderland and Southend’s home tie against Hull – both potentially could have been massive giant-killings. Manchester City’s dismal first-half performance against Watford also showed how much the competition means to the ‘big’ clubs these days and Wigan Athletic, the holders of the trophy, faced Crystal Palace in front of about 3 men and a dog.
Sunday was no better. A fairly exciting tie was played out between Sheffield United and Fulham in front of a half-empty Brammall Lane and a packed Stamford Bridge watched an extremely dull affair between Chelsea and Stoke in almost complete silence.
To top it all off they are now using a mango-coloured ball for FA Cup games. What’s all that about?
[authquoteright text=”We were outsung and outclassed by the Woolwich supporters which is a rare and embarrassing experience[/linequote]
Call me a traditionalist but I and many others feel hurt by the destruction of this once great competition. Football is no longer about the fans. It is about generating as much revenue as possible from competitions such as the Champions League and the Premier League.
The FA Cup is not financially beneficial to Premiership clubs anymore. The only real magic of the FA Cup these days is felt by lower-league clubs who may luckily get a great day out at Old Trafford or Anfield and reap the financial benefits from this, but will still probably advance no further than the 4th or 5th round.
It also doesn’t help having to listen to the dire punditry from Adrian Chiles and Roy Keane on ITV every cup weekend. Upon hearing Liverpool fans may be charged up to £93 a ticket their 5th round tie against Woolwich, something needs to be done urgently to return the competition to the fans and its past glories.
[author name=”Alex Lamper” avatar=”https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/427477086471585793/bZPFRcQp_bigger.jpeg” Website=”http://sensiblespur.wordpress.com/” bio=”I’m a young aspiring journalist looking to establish a blog on my true love, Tottenham Hotspur. I’m aiming to offer a sensible, alternative view on Spurs – different from many of the radical blog posts I read daily on Spurs from Twitter etc” twitter=”SensibleSpurs[/linequote]
All views and opinions expressed in this article are the views and opinions of the writer and do not necessarily represent the views of The Fighting Cock. We offer a platform for fans to commit their views to text and voice their thoughts. Football is a passionate game and as long as the views stay within the parameters of what is acceptable, we encourage people to write, get involved and share their thoughts on the mighty Tottenham Hotspur.
7 Comments
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28/01/2014 @ 5:43 pm
It’s the Champions League but also the Premiership. Sky’s relentless marketing of Super Sunday matches between the top clubs mean that they’ve taken over as the sexiest domestic matches.
25 years ago the Cup was one of the few ways into Europe if you didn’t win the league. Now it gets you into a competition no-one wants to be in anyway.
28/01/2014 @ 5:43 pm
In a word…….. money
The top 6 or 7 PL clubs crave for the CL money so concentrate on the league in the hope that they make top 4. Below that the clubs cannot risk dropping out of the PL because of the massive loss of money
Top championship clubs crave for the PL money so concentrate on the their league and so it goes all the way down the pyramid
If the FA offered the cup winners prize money of £20 million (which they can’t afford to do due to the Wembley debt) then clubs would make more of an effort to win it
Very sad but very true
28/01/2014 @ 5:47 pm
We’ve lost our last SIX semi finals, some deservedly so some unluckily, so we do still take the cup seriously. Yes we were beaten by a superior Arsenal side on the day, so I wouldn’t go as far to say that the players didn’t care about the cup, Arse were better than us on the day, simple.
To be outsung by the Woolwich you need only look to the left and right of you. It’s the fans that do the singing and while the players performances should go some way to encouraging the fans, in a derby we should be singing regardless. Although they way that they had our ticket allocation reduced was scandalous and was nothing more than a ploy to ensure as few yids were in the ground as possible.
You mention Manchester City’s dismal first-half performance against Watford, and that the cup means less to the big sides but you also want the romance of the cup whereby one of the smaller clubs can beat the big boys on any given day so a slight contradiction there.
Sadly the way of Football these days is Money, so the Champions league (with few champions in it, I might add) is the way forward, get into it on a regular basis you get the money to buy the players to build a squad that can compete for all major honors, domestic and European
28/01/2014 @ 6:24 pm
Agree with a lot of this, sadly.
At least ITV go next year, with BBC back.
I think one day the Premier League will have its own end of season play-offs – say top 8 fighting for top 4 and championship. Whatever you think, they would probably be must-see games.
As long as Spurs were in them – which they should be !
28/01/2014 @ 7:25 pm
Football hasn’t been about the fans since the Premiership started. Now it’s about the wealth division ..for the top rich clubs, the TV, and the sponsors. You’re right about the romance of the FA Cup. I was far more excited seeing Spurs play in cup games (both FA and League Cup) as a kid back in the late 1960s and again throughout the ’70s and ’80s to 1991. Of course I wanted to see them do well in the league, but despite being exciting most of the time, and having the odd brilliance (as in cup games), they were never consistent enough. But even the old League Division 1 was shared out far more back then with its top 3 or 4 ever changing clubs, including Spurs, in with a shout of winning the thing.
It’s not just the FA Cup and the old League Cup (which too had some very exciting moments) ..it’s everything to do with football today. Bobby Moore and Geoff Hurst (World Cup heroes) wouldn’t leave West Ham in the late 1960s despite not playing in the old European Cup (CL today) or winning lots of trophies. They were world champions and true greats, but loyal, and continued to ply their trade at the club which groomed them and looked after them, until they were past their best. Money has destroyed everything to do with this great game. It’s obscene that top players can be on £200,000+ per week and that fans have to spend £50 and more on tickets. The PL also created a terrible division of narrowed down top clubs from the rest. Look at this year with 11 clubs already in a relegation fight! Man U, Liverpool, Chelsea and Arsenal are still looming over everyone like the big top four they’ve always been, and then you’ve got the new kid on the block (and now the richest club in the world due to a whim) Man City, sweeping all before them. Spurs and Everton remain on the cusp ..despite cruel luck and wasted opportunities costing us big time over the past 3 to 4 years. Every time we get top class players they want to leave, despite being very well looked after, because they want CL football and an even higher profile (Bale, Modric, Berbatov, Carrick etc) .. They feel it’s their ‘right’, as if it’s not also their ‘responsibility’ to help the club they play for (and get hugely paid by) to reach that ultimate goal! ‘I am great’ so I want to play for the best side! Well, they are far ‘lesser greats’ than messrs Moore and Hurst, who thankfully never had that attitude! It won’t change now.
But if we are to salvage the memory of the FA Cup and make it a formidable trophy hunt once again, then we must bite the PL bullet and make the winners of the FA Cup, Champions League qualifiers. Subsequently making the PL a top 3 CL qualifiers only. If a club that finishes in the top 3 wins the FA Cup that year, then, and only then, should 4th come into play. The losing finalists, even if beaten by a top 3 team, should not take up the one CL spot remaining. That might wake up the spirit of cup play in Tottenham again, and make us less stressed about finishing 6th or 7th in the PL, especially with a possible FA Cup win being a double whammy for us!
28/01/2014 @ 10:04 pm
Yes, I too resent the way the FA Cup has been diminished over the last 20 years. Wenger was one of the first to field weaker sides. Of course, Europe’s second club tournament has been much diminished too. The last time Spurs won both these, they were still great competitions and I was thrilled to be present at those events. As too the 81 FA Cup Final, the greatest of all FA Cup finals
There should be a play-off at the end of the season between the FA Cup winners and the 4th placed side to determine who enters the Champions League, and who the Europa League. As for the latter, no team that is knocked out of it should be parachuted into the Europa League
Come on you Spurs!
28/01/2014 @ 10:37 pm
Football is now about money as the author and others have referred to. I would much rather win a trophy than finish fourth but the money men got onto the fact the game we love is a real money spinner and clubs financial needs seem far greater than the desire of we the supporters to see our team win a trophy.it’s sad that this is the way of the world and in a way we know that if we don’t get at least fourth the financial implications are massive. Having said that as Mr Blanchflower once said ‘the game is about glory’ and we don’t care what the businessmen say what the hell do we care cos we only know that there’s gonna be a show and the Tottenham Hotspur will be there. I really shouldn’t drink as I get too emotional. Come on you spurs!win tomorrow and 6 points off the top. I still believe!!!