True Romance of the Cup

It’ll have come to no surprise to anyone that the Football Association has managed to completely screw over Liverpool fans ahead of this year’s FA Cup final. It’s merely another symptom of the level of fuckwittery of the people running the best sport in the world.

To whit: the final, by tradition, is held on a Saturday, kicking off at 3pm. They already messed about a bit last year by having a full league schedule on the same day, meaning a lot of people wouldn't have had the chance to watch such a big game due to being at their own team’s game. Now, this year they've decided to hold the game in the early evening. Unfortunately for Liverpool fans, this means that by the time the game finishes, they’ll have long missed the last train back North, due to engineering works that have been scheduled for the last 18 months. Naturally, the FA didn't bother to check this as the shift in time was important to things like “maximising viewer revenue streams” and “brand awareness in other markets”. The actual poor sods paying stupid money for a ticket don’t seem to have raised much interest.

The common myth is that Manchester United destroyed the integrity of the cup. In 1999, we flew off to Brazil to take part in the inaugural World Club Championship, withdrawing from the FA Cup due to fixture congestion. Pundits have long since perpetuated the myth that this moment above all meant nobody could take the oldest football competition in the world seriously anymore. Of course, it’s a line that ignores just about all the important factors.

(As it happens, I wasn't best pleased about it myself, thinking we should have just played a bunch of reserves against whoever we drew, and I was especially miffed when we subsequently embarrassed ourselves in the games. That the whole farce of a tournament was never repeated shows it was all a colossal waste of time.)

The FA, I suspect, are quite happy someone else is taking the flak for the fading of the glory of the cup. For it ignores their own series of decisions that have seen most fans see playing in it as a fairly low priority:

a) Let’s start with the fact they sold the name of it, so that commentators on TV have to refer to “The FA Cup, sponsored by Ann Summers' New Vibrator Range” or whoever has stumped up the cash this year.

b) Getting rid of semi-final replays. Alright, maybe I’m biased as a United fan, as we had some crackers of these in 1985, 1990 and 1999.

c) And on the topic of semi-finals, deciding to play them at fucking Wembley. It’s been said many times by many people, but it somewhat obviously removes any allure of playing in the final. We know why it’s been done (because the FA need to pay off the stupidly huge bill for building that pile-of-crap new Wembley stadium), but the fact last Saturday of having' tens of thousands of scousers having to get down to London to a early afternoon kick-off is absolute madness.

d) Finally, and more obviously, fucking around with the times of games to suit TV. Chelsea vs Tottenham on Sunday started at 6pm on a Sunday evening. What kind of time is that for a football game?

Not that the FA are unique in this kind of thing. In the past, the people running football were in for the power, the prestige (especially club owners) and the money (especially the authorities). These days, you suspect, they've got rid of the first two in that list. Football corruption in certain nations is rife, especially around a betting industry that is gaining more prominence, but is generally ignored by a complicit media. Andersred has written a superb article on how the powers-that-be in football refuse to do anything about the crucial issues concerning the game.

My own club has suffered from this attitude: I’m even aware that the people in charge of Manchester United probably don’t like me. When I go to a game, on average ten times a season, the most I spend is on my ticket and £3 on a programme. They’d much rather have some one-off tourist in the seat, who’ll visit the club shop and spend a fortune on souvenirs.

Football isn’t dead, even if the body is beginning to smell funny. The success of clubs like AFC Wimbledon shows that supporters can make things happen on their own terms. The rest of us may have to make do with casting envious glances to Germany, where supporters are treated with at least some degree of respect from their clubs.