After a fantastic Saturday of FA cup matches I tuned in to the BBC Radio 606 Podcast Saturday night to catch Robbie Savage and Mike Parry discuss the action from the day, fully expecting to hear how amazing it was for the minnow club Crawley Town to nearly pull off a monumental upset at Old Trafford. I hoped to hear from both Crawley Town and Manchester United fans congratulating Steve Evans and his players on a memorable day for the Non-League club. I also wanted to hear the reaction to Everton's incredible win at the Bridge over Chelsea. I was looking forward listening to the Chelsea faithful's reaction to going out of the cup at this stage. Truly this is the spirit of the FA cup isn't it? As they say in Football on this side of the ocean, "Any given Sunday". Basically any day, any team, could beat another. The true beauty of sport. Although, it doesn't happen on a regular basis in English football like we see here in the land of salary caps and revenue sharing to promote parity, the opportunity for it to happen it never more present during the FA cup.
However, the phone-in was dominated with a ridiculous idea put forth by Mike Parry to introduce a seating system into the FA cup. In spite of every caller , with the exception of a Martian (Robbie Savage - nice one!), shot down the idea. From what I could tell, Mike's intent was to insure that a team like Millwall, for example, doesn't get to the FA cup final. The basis of his argument was that sports fans outside of England wouldn't care about a cup final involving a team like Millwall, therefore would not tune in. Mike - the problem is that outside of England (US & Canada at least) the masses are not tuning in anyways. It doesn't matter if it was a Manchester United - Chelsea final, the casual sports fan in North America is not going to watch. Does Mike, really believe that come May 14th, that sports fans in Canada and the United States are going to be watching the FA cup final? I could be wrong, but my money will be on the vast majority of sports fans tuning in to see the Red Sox and Yankee's play that day. The sad fact is that our sports media is dominated with Baseball, Football (NFL),Basketball, Hockey and Nascar, Soccer comes in somewhere just ahead of the Professional Bowling Tour. Coverage is getting better every year, but Canada and the U.S. still has a long way to go in nurturing it's love of soccer before the casual fan even knows a game is taking place.
Bottom line, the FA cup is perfect. It's a chance for dreams to play out and occasionally come true. It's an opportunity for kids to see their home town hero's play at venues like Old Trafford. It's inspirational and grows the game at the grass roots level. Competitions like the FA cup is why England is the home of soccer. Please don't ever change it.
My two cents...
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