Honestly, when I saw the starting XI and the seven substitutes for my club’s F.A Cup third round tie against Coventry at a rather quiet and seemingly sporadically populated Ricoh Arena, I only had two thoughts: we don’t seem too fussed about winning this and it’ll be good to see how the kids get on. Among the newly-announced “Best Player of the Championship,” Adam Lallana, according to theseventytwo, and his familiar midfield team-mates Morgan Schneiderlin, Dean Hammond and Jack Cork, was 17-year old Jack Stephens, 17-year old James Ward-Prowse, who made his debut aged 16 in the Carling Cup, and 18-year old Sam Hoskins.
When, after only five minutes, Gary McSheffrey opened the scoring for Coventry City and the Sky Sports News bar slowly moved across my screen revealing so, I received secondary confirmation from my Portsmouth supporting friend that we were indeed losing, “Gary McSheffery!” read the text. Whilst sparking emotions of frustration and incomprehension, as well as resisting the urge to correct his spelling mistake, the text led me to, regrettably and ashamedly, descend into an air of big-club snobbery that I have no right to have.
Having quickly concluded that he had informed me of our early ill-fate because he is a closet Saints fan more interested in following us on our plodding march to (realistically, probably a play-off loss) Championship title and that he was currently suffering from inferior club syndrome, I replied with a sentence I believe “proper” football fans should never utter, “the team clearly says, ‘[we] don’t care about this game’” which really meant, “we’re losing so I’m going to pretend I don’t care about this game.” After mentally succumbing to the school of thought that the F.A Cup was a distraction to our league campaign and changing the subject, having poorly defended the accusation that it, “ruins the F.A Cup spirit,” I was left trying to justify to myself why it would be ok if we lost. I couldn’t.
However, whether managers admit throwing cup games or not, Steve Kean did in the B-side Cup and was suitably damned for doing so, it is becoming an ever more increasing occurrence. The Premier League, The Championship, whatever league the team is in, is the breadwinner: for teams involved with a title race or teams staving off relegation, a cup run can be deemed as an unnecessary addition. Last year, beating Cardiff City, Wolverhampton Wanderers, Brighton & Hove Albion and West Ham United to get there, Stoke City reached the F.A Cup final and lost to Manchester City, and it’s not the first time we’ve had a so-called “surprise” finalist: in the past few years, Cardiff and Portsmouth have also qualified for the F.A Cup final, with the latter winning it and reaching the final again two years later, performing admirably to do so.
Although it turned out that Saints had 13 players unavailable for the F.A Cup tie anyway, the inclusion of several inexperienced players left me pondering how the F.A Cup could maintain its seriousness into the future, as it seemingly loses a bit of its magic with each passing year. As I followed the game and Saints equalised through Ward-Prowse and Aaron Martin grabbed the winner eight minutes from time, I had the eureka moment that will undoubtedly win me an MBE at some point in the future for “Services to English football.”
Having joined the academy as an eight-year old, Ward-Prowse progressed through the youth ranks and into the development squad, as well as continuing to feature in Southampton’s u-18 side managed by former Saints right-back Jason Dodd, and grabbed his debut for the first team back in October, playing the full 90 minutes in a 2-0 away loss to Crystal Palace in the 4th round of the Carling Cup. Aaron Martin, born in the Isle of Wight and bred in Southampton – Ward-Prowse in Portsmouth – was signed by Southampton in 2009 from neighbouring Eastleigh and since then, his 18-month contract has been extended and he has heavily featured in the Development Squad and is currently enjoying a three-match run in the starting line-up of the first team in Jose Fonte’s absence. There it hit me: two home-grown English players, scoring the goals that saw my team progress through to the fourth round of the oldest football competition in the world.
In South America, annually now, after a lengthy absence since the 70s, is the Superclassico Das Americas. The trophy, which takes the place of the Roca Cup, is contested for by Argentina and Brazil and the rule that makes it different from any other friendly between fierce rivals, is that of player eligibility for the game: to play in the Superclassico, you must play in the domestic leagues of your respective nation.