This weekend saw the FA Cup kick off properly with teams from the country’s top two leagues joining the fray in the third round, though even before the usual upsets there was controversy.
Aston Villa manager Paul Lambert claimed most Premiership managers of the lesser lights, more concerned with top flight survival, could do without the cup before Swansea City knocked out Manchester United and Rochdale pulled off a cup shock by defeating Leeds United.
As these comments materialised managers jumped to the competition’s defence, however, subsequent results, like Villa’s defeat to Sheffield United, a team two divisions below them, and Nottingham Forest humbling West Ham United, who fielded an inexperienced team mainly comprised of under-21 players, have given rise to questions of the importance of the oldest club competition in the world.
Everyone talks about the magic of the cup and whether it has lost its shine in recent years due to the raise in importance of Champions League football and the financial implications of surviving, or the failure to do so, of staying in the Premier League.
Now, after some of the results at the weekend and even Wigan Athletics success against Manchester City in May, it could be argued that that isn’t the case, but it’s clear with some of the excuses used at the weekend that it just no longer figures high in managerial priorities.
It’s possible that with the money flying around the Premier League nowadays that this will now be the case.
For example, Wigan received just shy of £2million for winning the cup and subsequently gained over £40million for finishing 18th in the league and subsequently being relegated.
Despite this, when asked about his cup travails over the weekend, former Wigan manager and current Everton manager Roberto Martinez called the competition ‘unique’, which was backed up by Jose Mourinho saying winning the cup was one of his career ‘high moments’.
So what can be done to re-establish the trophies stance in the modern era?
Many suggestions have been made some of which have more merit than others.
The idea of abolishing replays to avoid clogging up fixture lists has been put forward, but they are now ingrained in the history of the competition and getting rid of them would rip even more heritage away.
Another proposal is to reward the victorious team with a place in the Champions League instead of the team that finishes fourth in the Premier League.
Personally, that makes some sense, especially as the competition you would enter is called the Champions League, not the ‘Team who finished three places behind the Champions League’, but the powers-that-be would never accept this option.
It would also help if games were all played at 3 o’clock on a Saturday afternoon instead of dragged out over nearly 6 different kick-off times as they were this weekend, but in the age of multi-platform television, that will not happen either.
The best and most sensible option, one that hasn’t been given widespread broadcast, is to do away with the League Cup.
Milk Cup. Coca-Cola Cup. Carling Cup. Capital One Cup. Whatever you want to call it, get rid of it.
Only one of the other ‘Top 5’ European countries has two cup competitions, France, and their football is not on the same standard as the other four, yet.
Spain, Italy, Germany, even the Netherlands only have one competition and they’re all treated seriously.
Real Madrid, Barcelona and Atletico Madrid all take the Copa del Rey very seriously, all winning it in the last few seasons, and, in the case of Atletico, using the confidence gained to springboard them into a long overdue title challenge, much like Manchester City have since winning in 2011.
Inter Milan, Roma and Napoli have all won the Coppa Italia in recent years and Bayern Munich, Borussia Dortmund and Schalke captured the DFB Pokal in Germany in that same time frame.
These countries all have tight fixture schedules, maybe even more so when they have to make up for lost time from their winter breaks, and the big teams all get to the final reaches of European competition, something that Aston Villa and West Ham can’t claim this season.
If you were to get rid of the League Cup, a competition whose history is nowhere near as strong as the FA Cup, having only been formed in 1960, and which for the last 10-15 years has been used by teams like Arsenal to field a team of kids, it would free up so much more time in the football calendar.
You could leave the schedule as it stands. Teams would have played fewer games at the start of the season and if they had reached the latter stages, as West Ham have done this season, they wouldn’t have to play two days after another cup game.
Or, more radically, you could bring the third round earlier on in the season and play it much like the League Cup is currently.
Of course logistically this would mean earlier rounds being maybe even before the league season starts, but how bad can that be for smaller teams? The only thing they would replace would be pointless friendly matches.
Yes, we would lose some of the wonderful stories like Bradford City reaching the final last season, but how can that compare to the mountains of cup shocks created by the 142-year-old FA Cup?
Stop managers making excuses and get the competition back to its rightful place by binning the League Cup.
Image courtesy of 2013 Flawka, with thanks.
