Imagine you slept all day on Saturday 5th May and woke up on Sunday morning to read the newspapers, you would most likely assume Chelsea had beaten Liverpool in a league match. The lack of newspaper coverage for what was once the biggest annual event in English football was astounding but it certainly wasn’t unexpected.
Played on the penultimate weekend of Premier League not only took the Final’s privilege of being the only game of the weekend away but the FA Cup Final was not even the most important game last weekend. Look past the first few pages of Sports coverage in the Sunday newspapers and you would have found previews to the games of Sunday which included both of the Manchester clubs chasing the Premier League title. Just to add insult to injury, even the traditional Kick off time of 3pm was shelved so that there could be a game on TV well before the final at 5.15pm.
Watching Chelsea’s celebrations afterwards was also highlighting the decline of the once great tournament. Although Chelsea players were obviously overjoyed to be lifting a trophy, in interviews words like “momentum” and “confidence” were used when asked how this affected their preparation for the Champions League final as if the FA Cup Final was simply a warm up to Chelsea’s main event. Much like the Community Shield is considered the main warm up for the two best teams of the previous season.
The celebrations may have been much more ecstatic had Liverpool won the game as this was effectively their last meaningful game of the season but the rest of the country would still have missed that magic feeling they expect on FA Cup final day.
What is perhaps most tragic is that having a chance to QUALIFY (not win) for the Champions League and get all the financial perks that go with it is now considered as a more successful season then having the opportunity to actually lift a world renowned trophy.
What was once certainly the biggest event in English football and one of the biggest in world football, an event that celebrities from all round the world grew up watching, that stopped the whole nation from working for a day regardless of whether their team was in the final or not, has now become a mere sideshow in the money obsessed world of elite football.
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Complete rubbish. The fact of the matter is that as the Blues notch up more FA Cup Final wins, they get ever closer to the favourite teams of the northern dominated press. It’s therefore convenient to denigrate the FA Cup as if when their favourites won it – it really was important but now, it no longer has the same attraction. Nice try.