When Florentino Perez was single-handedly helping to sink the monstrous European Super League with a series of ill-advised interviews last year, he claimed the plan was the only way to capture the attention of bored teenagers switching off football.
To get them away from their video games and smartphones, his flawed argument ran, the sport needed to ditch the mediocre and create a closed shop of excellence. No more Leicesters, what the kids wanted was re-runs of Real Madrid taking on Juventus – the best of the best, a gleaming, shining testament to flawless excellence.
Perez and his band of chancers thought it was the answer but in reality, what he was describing was T.G.I. McScratchy’s Goodtime Foodrinkery, the restaurant in the Simpsons where “it’s constantly New Year’s Eve”.
“It must be wonderful to ring in the New Year over and over and over,” Marge Simpson cheerfully says to a waiter as the band strikes up Auld Lang Syne again. “Please kill me,” the man serving the champagne deadpans back.
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Arteta shows ruthless side as Tavares subbed in first half of Arsenal's FA Cup tie with Forest09 January, 2022The joke is too much of a good thing isn’t good for anyone. Which is perhaps what accounts for the enduring appeal of the FA Cup third round, which always offers something so refreshingly different to football’s usual narrative played out among a cast of (mostly) the usual suspects.
A personal opinion is it’s the noise that differentiates third round day. When the unthinkable happens and the underdog scores the explosion of noise from visiting fans – along with the flailing limbs and the roar that verges on disbelief – is unlike anything else you hear in football.
High up in level seven of the Leazes End at St James’ Park on Saturday, the pandemonium among Cambridge’s supporters when Joe Ironside scored tapped right into the heart of what keeps the third round weekend relevant.
Bodies tumbled down rows of seats in ecstasy, fans surfed shoulders punching the air. From somewhere a beach ball appeared. It was raw, unvarnished emotion that every single football fan without black and white sympathies would appreciate.
There were 4,000 in the gods at Newcastle, a riot of colour and cacophony that marked one of the greatest single results in the club’s long history. They have never kicked a ball in the top flight and with the Magpies now backed by a Sovereign Wealth Fund, the chances of repeating this magnificence result in the future are vanishingly slim. But did any of that matter as Ironside, a 28-year-old who grew up idolising Alan Shearer, spun in the penalty area to nick the 56th minute winner?
The goal, Cambridge’s win and the sonic boom from the away end distils the alchemy of third round day. It’s why it has so far managed to survive being laid siege to by football’s vested interests.
Cup rules mean a greater percentage of away fans in grounds and the travelling armies at matches through the country were proof that supporters still care. Good pricing by clubs that encourages parents to bring their kids also swelled crowds but it really helps when you have a day like Saturday, with so many shocks that Match of the Day was spoiled for choice.
Huddersfield struck early, adding Burnley’s scalp to the impressive season Carlos Corberan is presiding over in West Yorkshire. But by 6pm that was overshadowed by events in Newcastle, Conference North Kidderminster’s stunning defeat of Reading and brilliant Boreham Wood’s win against AFC Wimbledon.
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It captured the imagination, which is a phrase you couldn’t use about the TV executives who picked Leeds’ visit to West Ham for ITV’s prime slot. While Antonio Conte was fretting about Anthony O’Connor we were made to sit through a re-run of a game that would hardly headline your average Super Sunday.
Maybe one day they will realise the beauty of the cup lies in its difference and start offering those games a showcase, rather than ones with a ready, if slightly bored, audience. It really is what makes the cup. Just ask those Cambridge fans still peeling themselves off the roof of St James’ Park.
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