THE FA CUP IN 21ST CENTURY ENGLAND

THE SADNESS OF BEING RELEGATED WITH THE JOY OF SILVERWARE

Speaking of the previous topic of surviving relegation – or perhaps looking increasingly likely that they won’t in Wigan’s case -  it seems that Wigan are set to be in the highly bizarre situation of winning a major* domestic trophy and the afterglow of that happy win being tinged with grief of suffering the indignity of relegation (Now that Iv'e written this they'll probably end up performing some miracle and surviving relegation). 

It’s hard to know who suffers the most grief these days - a clubs fans or its accountants.

I have heard of the notion that the FA Cup isn’t considered what it used to be in a few articles here and, but I only started to think about it when contemplating the notion that the “The FA Cup Final lost its lustre long ago” as Australian Football writer Mike Tuckerman has put it in his latest article on the Roar sports website.

As far as the ‘lustre’ of the FA Cup goes, it’s probably more a case of recognising the place of FA Cup institution in the English (and even global) football eco-system has been changed in the modern “EPL” era.

Firstly, speaking as a Toon fan, while I can apply the word “bizarre” to Wigan’s seemingly impending situation, I won’t necessarily apply the word “unenviable” as fans of a number of other larger clubs perhaps would.

My opinion probably wouldn’t have been the case before 2009 when I had no memory of relegation and the notion seemed like a bottomless abyss of horror. 

But having “been there and done that” back in 2009 (and thankfully unlike some other clubs with the word “Middle” in them) and swiftly come back up again, I think that given the drought that has occurred since lifting the Inter-city Fairs Cup (Europa League) trophy in 1969 I am pretty much in the same camp as most Toon fans in saying that I’ll take anything. 

Heck, I’d even take the League Cup.

So from that perspective the FA Cup hasn’t lost its lustre at all and I personally consider it a major trophy.

That said, while there was a time about 15 years or so ago when say, if Manchester United lost the title to Arsenal or vice-versa, winning the FA would be seen as a way to redeem the season, I doubt that winning the FA Cup would be considered to have the same redemptive qualities amongst the successful elite of English football.

Indeed, the term “major” has an asterix next to it at the beginning of the article because amongst some of the successful elite in English football, the FA Cup is seen as a more minor trophy.

The reasons for this is perhaps as the EPL has managed to garner more money from each successful television broadcast deal, the capacity to pay some of the highest player wages in the world has been the result.

Subsequently the English league has ended up being a concentration point for some of the worlds talent, when we mix in the ability to attract Billionaires in conjunction with talented players...voila...we have English teams that are now not only competitive in the UEFA Champions League (UCL), but are under pressure from their owners to win it.

This has subsequently meant that the UCL has taken the FA Cups spot as the major cup competition trophy that some of the elite clubs aspire to each season aside the season title.

What probably needs to be recognised is that this isn’t necessarily a indictment on the FA Cup as such as some are putting it - after all it still serves the same useful function of uniting the grassroots to the top levels of the English game as it always has done – rather it is perhaps more of an observation (and to some English fans and indictment) that the largest English clubs aren’t quite as ‘English” as they once were.

One can probably look back to the beginning of the EPL era as the point in time when the top clubs were effectively detached and disconnected from the English footballing ecosystem.

This is reflected quite well by the fact they are no longer of the English FA’s jurisdiction, and they are no longer of the Football League’s jurisdiction, they are in effect an autonomous jurisdiction unto themselves in the sense that they are an entity unto themselves who run themselves with no connection to the other tiers of English football outside of the fact of the promotion/relegation system.

There are some merits to this in terms of the revenue that is able to be generated but some other controversies as highlighted by a Parliamentary committee that studied the issue. This is a blog for another time however.

But over the first two decades of the EPL, a theme has emerged where the league is becoming identiably less “English” and noticeably more international, which is quite clear from the “Air Asia” ads on the referees to the billboard ads written a completely different alphabet. 

It’s an interesting phenomenon to consider from a marketing perspective, but the biggest sign of what the EPL is morphing into some kind of “international football league” was the “Game 39” idea floated a few years back. 

Needless to say it is likely that issue is not dead in the minds of EPL administrators, merely dormant until the EPL administrators can find a more opportune time to put the idea forward when there is less resistance.

Hardly surprising then that in this climate, the choice of complementary cup competition of the elite clubs would transition from one that is English based to one that is more internationally oriented, such as the European Champions League trophy.

This is probably truer though of only the “top five” as I shall call them at this time, I would hazard a guess and say that to the teams from the “upper mid-table” area of the EPL ecosystem down the FA Cup is still quite meaningful.

Perhaps this is because their international profile and “brand exposure” is not as strong and given they enjoy intermittent European competition at best, therefore unlike the elite clubs their orientation is still somewhat more towards England and their local communities.

At the end of the day, given the attention the FA Cup brings to the English grassroots in particular I personally still think it is an institution worth respecting.

Perhaps the ultimate irony to the debate about whether the FA Cup is becoming an anachronism or not in modern times, is the possibility that the FA Cup will end up being what best articulates and symbolises English football in the 21st century