Call me naïve or an “old soul,” but I’m a big fan of the FA Cup. I’ve always been attracted to the obvious historical significance of the oldest national football competition in the world, but in an age where the financial and competitive supremacy of the “superclubs” rapidly intensifies and rumors of various permutations for a “European Super League” abound, it is really the quaint meritocracy in how the competition engages the English pyramid below its top two tiers that makes the Cup potentially so refreshing.
736 clubs from the top 10 tiers in England have now featured in the competition, a welcome sight given how severely the coronavirus pandemic has threatened the existence of non-league football and the relatively smaller clubs in the EFL. However, the fact that the UK entered a third lockdown as it struggles to contain its most aggressive surge in cases yet, a development that has significantly pierced the semi-bubble of elite football in the country, added a whole new layer of doubt and cynicism to the now annual narrative regarding the diminishing prestige of perhaps English football’s biggest link to a somewhat more egalitarian past.
Therefore, amidst troubling headlines such as the cancellation of Southampton vs. Shrewsbury and the reports of numerous squads in isolation (including a few we will discuss in just a moment), I was thankful that the Cup delivered plenty of old-fashioned feel-good fireworks with its metaphorical back against the wall, and I’m not talking about the actual pyrotechnic tribute that briefly postponed National League Stockport County’s clash against West Ham.
Before really getting into the major feel-good stories of the weekend, however, I have to talk about Liverpool. Focusing on the big boys might not be the real purpose of this blog, but the tie itself was a revealing look at football in our current moment.
Irony inevitably abounded, but not in the usual footballing history sense. Last December, a team of Liverpool youngsters did the club proud but lost a league cup quarterfinal 5-0 at Aston Villa as the first team watched on in Dubai as they prepared for the Club World Cup, which the Reds would win for the first time in club history.
On Friday, it was Villa who plucked kids from their youth setup to patch together a matchday squad for a cup tie, but the underlying reason was much darker this time around.
An outbreak at the Birmingham club’s training ground meant that the entirety of Villa’s first-team squad and coaching staff were unavailable, but the show went on. Originally marketed as an opportunity for the Reds to exact revenge for the 7-2 thumping they suffered at Villa Park earlier this season, the first time a champion of the English top-flight had conceded that many goals in a single league game since 1953, the tie would now be a high-profile contest in name only.
Given all of Klopp’s incessant complaining this season about fixture pileup, not having five subs (though in several games this season he has not even made the available three, including when Liverpool did not make a single substitution against Tottenham, the last time the Reds picked up all three points in the EPL), and the Reds’ well-documented injury woes, I expected the German manager to field a starting XI only slightly less youthful than Villa’s.
After all, Klopp has clearly not considered the EFL Cup and FA Cup a priority in the past. Beyond the league cup’s conflict with the Club World Cup last season, Klopp played a youthful reserve side against both Everton and Shrewsbury in the Third and Fourth Round of Liverpool’s 2020 FA Cup campaign, respectively (though those lineups were admittedly good enough to progress in both ties and included now bona fide first-teamer Curtis Jones).
As a Liverpool fan, I bemoaned Klopp’s attitude towards the FA Cup when the treble was still on the table. This time around, however, I don’t think anyone would have accused Klopp of disrespecting the competition or missing an opportunity by fielding a reserve side. Though Klopp’s anger over scheduling and substitutions has gotten real old, it would be absurd not to search for chances to rest players in this uniquely demanding season.
Klopp, however, ran the risk of slight hypocrisy and named a starting XI that included plenty of first-teamers. It seems Liverpool were desperate to regain momentum after picking up only two points in their last three Premier League games (Manchester United, if you haven’t heard, took advantage Tuesday in a 1-0 win at Burnley, returning to the top of the table at this stage in the season for the first time since the Ferguson era).
When Mane scored with less than four minutes played, it appeared the Reds would indeed be able to rebuild their confidence a la NBA players dunking on kids, but the Villa boys refused to go quietly into the night. Louie Barry, who wasn’t even born when James Milner — Liverpool’s captain in the second half after Henderson was subbed off at halftime — made his FA Cup debut for Leeds in 2003, equalized late in the first half after a peach of a pass from Callum Rowe, who at 21 was comparatively one of the grizzled veterans in the Villa side. Liverpool eventually scored three in five minutes after the hour mark, but the young Villans had already earned plenty of plaudits.
Klopp’s strong lineup underlined a trend of top sides taking the Cup pretty seriously if — unlike Villa — they had first-team players available. Palace and Wolves were both close to full strength (although the Eagles were missing Zaha) in the other Friday fixture, and it took a rocket from Adama Traore for Wolves to prevail.
Marcelo Bielsa also named a strong side before rotating a bit at halftime, and Leeds paid the price by being humiliated in West Sussex. League Two Crawley Town did not just deservedly run out 3-0 winners at the Peoples’ Pension Stadium, they also rubbed salt on Leeds’ wounds by bringing on former reality TV star Mark Wright for his professional debut late-on.
The most romantic headlines, however, were reserved for eighth-tier Marine A.F.C when they hosted Spurs Sunday, though the team of everyday workers that included a garbageman and a school teacher could not prevent Mourinho’s experimental side from winning handily in front of an empty stadium. Even though Marine fans were unable to pack the homely Marine Travel Arena, the “magic” of the cup was still encapsulated by Merseysiders watching from their gardens or looking out their bedroom window for a peek at Gareth Bale.
The heavily favored visitors provided some uplifting storylines too. Alfie Devine’s goal on debut at the ripe age of 16 years and 163 days made him Tottenham’s youngest ever goalscorer, and the boy released from the Liverpool academy at 11 broke the record on Merseyside, no less.
The gathering of Marine fans outside the stadium to greet the team buses was a downer of a storyline, though. It not only was a reminder of what the game is missing with games behind closed doors but also highlighted the dangerous non-compliance of COVID-19 restrictions that has occasionally occurred across the continent when clubs have reached historic highs — such as the celebrations outside Anfield after Liverpool clinched the 2020 EPL title in June — or disappointing lows — like November’s violent protest in Glasgow calling for Neil Lennon’s firing after Celtic lost to Ross County in the Scottish League Cup. Fortunately, Merseyside police later said that the “vast majority” of Marine fans were social distancing, and many of the supporters photographed appear to be wearing masks.
The coronavirus inevitably dampened traditional Third Round underdog stories elsewhere as well, though. What was on its face a historic 2-0 win over Derby County for sixth-tier Chorley on Saturday came with the obvious asterisk that the Lancashire club actually went into the game as favorites. With Derby interim manager Wayne Rooney and his entire first-team in isolation, the Championship club found themselves picking youngsters to fill a squad like Villa the day before. The now-famous Adele-inspired celebrations in the Chorley locker room might have been endearing enough to even bring a smile to the face of Roy Keane (I’m just speculating), but it was hard to forget that such a party is currently indefensible in any other context (and perhaps was still wrong in the first place).
On a weekend where the third lockdown has renewed doubt about whether games should still be played at all — Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta admitted Tuesday that playing in some of the darkest days of the pandemic in the UK feels “morally strange” (though he also noted positives to currently playing as well) — I think the football world was in dire need of some genuine mystique from its oldest competition. Fortunately, the traditional “magic” of the FA Cup Third Round was more or less renewed, at least for a weekend.
A sort of epilogue: These reflections are admittedly not the most timely, and most fans have probably already turned their attention to the results from the midweek fixtures in the Premier League and the huge Liverpool-Man United clash at Anfield Sunday.
However, this delay allows me to bookend my description of last weekend’s “magic” by noting the most eye-popping result in the DFB-Pokal in a long while (after all, I can’t let this blog become too Anglocentric). After falling behind twice to treble winners Bayern Munich, second-tier Holstein Kiel scored a last gasp equalizer in stoppage time of normal time and prevailed in the seventh round of penalties (after both teams had been perfect in the first six rounds, no less) to knock out the two-time defending champions of the German cup in the second round.
I thought the FA Cup Third Round was able to restore some of its traditional allure this past weekend, but the DFB-Pokal seemingly managed to “one-up” its English counterpart this year, and one round earlier at that.
