Let’s be honest with each other, the FA Cup has become an irrelevance. Once the pinnacle of domestic football, the world’s oldest cup competition is now about as popular as a presidential executive order, with only slightly more charm.
Indeed, one could argue it’s even worse than an irrelevance. For England’s biggest clubs, it’s little more than a nuisance, something to swat away with disdain. Witness the third-string Liverpool team Jurgen Klopp sent south to Wolverhampton, or a hapless Bastian Schweinsteiger - released from Jose Mourinho’s basement for 90 minutes of exercise - desperately trying to remember how to make a 5-yard pass at Old Trafford. Nobody wants to see that.
So The18, ever the good football citizen, has decided to give the FA some unsolicited, free consulting on how to re-energize the jewel in its crown, and very simple advice it is: send the Premier League’s hash-tagged, Cristal-guzzling, Bentley-rolling prima donnas to England’s darkest, most fervent footballing backwaters and make them suffer. Here’s how:
Seed the Draw…
Nobody gives a damn about a third round tie between a disinterested Everton and a half-hearted Leicester City, despite what the TV networks might say. What makes the FA Cup special is the sight of the Premier League’s overpaid posers getting the living s*** pounded out of them by 11 hyper-motivated semi-professionals in front of 5,000 rabid, close-quartered supporters on a pitch that either resembles a war-torn battlefield or is made of plastic.
That is the defining essence of the FA Cup and why the standout tie of the fifth round is Sutton United vs. Arsenal at Gander Green Lane.
The changing rooms that await Arsenal when they visit Sutton United in the FA Cup 5th round! pic.twitter.com/5uucN28sUC
— Terrace Images (@TerraceImages) January 30, 2017
So why not ensure we get those fixtures from the start, rather than leaving it to chance? Seed the FA Cup draw in every round, with the highest placed team in the football league pyramid drawn against the lowest, second highest against second lowest and so on.
And just for good measure, decree that all ties must be played at the ground of the lower ranked side.
…And Make It Worth Winning
But how do you ensure that the Costas and Pogbas of the world turn up to the Borough Sports Ground and Sincill Bank? Clearly the promise of a sojourn down Wembley Way is no longer alluring enough for Premier League teams or even their Championship counterparts to take the competition seriously. Hell, Louis van Gaal led United to a FA Cup triumph last year and was fired before a medal could be placed around his neck.
Winning the FA Cup didn't matter for LvG in the end. Photo: AnyoneButUtd | Twitter
So the FA needs to find a sufficiently juicy carrot with which to entice teams back to the fray, and what better lure than the one thing these teams apparently care about most: Premier League points. Give the winner of the FA Cup 10 league points and you can be damned sure they’ll take it seriously.
The FA Cup final could become decisive in determining the winner of the league or indeed saving a club from relegation. It would have import, which is something it’s lacked for a very long time.
And there you have it. Two very simple rule changes that would re-energize the FA Cup by giving us exactly what we all want to see: part-time plumbers, accountants and bus conductors giving the Premier League’s superstars 90 minutes of footballing hell, and a competition whose latter stages actually mean something again.
Mr. Chairman of The Football Association, you’re welcome.
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