Premier League Leeds United suffered the biggest upset of the FA Cup Third Round when they fell to a 3-0 defeat by fourth-tier Crawley Town on Sunday as Manchester City and Chelsea eased through.
A brilliant solo strike from Nick Tsaroulla in the 50th minute put League Two Crawley in front after a first half in which Leeds had caused them few problems.
Sunday’s FA Cup Third Round meeting between Tottenham Hotspur, fourth-place in the Premier League, and Marine AFC, sixth-place in the Northern Premier League Division One North West, represented a record gap of 161 places in the English football pyramid.
The prospect of the greatest giant killing of all time — and the spectacle of José Mourinho’s side visiting Rossett Park in Merseyside — allowed Marine to compensate for the potential loss in revenue of playing the match behind closed doors by selling 20,000 virtual tickets.
Chorley FC, a non-league club, continued its dream run through the FA Cup with a 2-0 win over EFL Championship (second tier) Derby County on Saturday. The team celebrated with a singalong of Adele’s “Someone Like You” in the locker room.
Derby County, which has been hit hard by Covid-19, didn’t field its strongest lineup on Saturday and paid the price with Chorley scoring through Connor Hall and Mike Calveley.
Football without fans has hurt clubs throughout the footballing pyramid, but the pandemic has hit non-league sides especially hard. These clubs depend on ticket sales as a primary source of revenue, and with empty stadiums across England, many local teams have been pushed to the brink financially.
These semi-pro and amateur sides also provide a helpful reminder of what true football fandom entails.
No one can argue that 2020 has been an awful year that we all want to put behind us. But before we look ahead 2021, we have to take a minute to appreciate how sports have provided something resembling normality in recent months.
Considering the severity of the COVID-19 pandemic, we have been incredibly lucky to have soccer leagues playing regularly since June.
The FA Cup dream continues for Marine FC as the Northern Premier League Division One North West side qualified for the FA Cup third round for the second time in club history. The eighth-tier club defeated League Two side Colchester United on penalties in the first round, then dispatched sixth-tier Havant & Waterloo by a scoreline of 1-0 in the second round.
The Mariners reward: a third round tie at The Marine Travel Arena against current Premier League leaders Tottenham Hotspur.
That’s a hellish Sunday afternoon for supporters of Everton Football Club.
On the women’s side, the 2020 FA Cup Final at Wembley Stadium was lost after a dramatic 3-1 extra time defeat to Manchester City. City’s Sam Mewis opened the scoring with an unmarked header off a corner kick in the 40th minute.
The FA Cup just finished the final round of qualifying over the weekend, and we now know which 32 non-league sides will be joining the 92 Football League clubs to compete in the 140th iteration of football's most storied competition.
The cup was first contested in 1871-72 with Wanderers defeating Royal Engineers in the final. The competition now encompasses the top 10 divisions of English football with the final played in the 90,000-seat Wembley Stadium in London.
An opulent spa town in North Yorkshire might not be the leading location for an up-and-coming football club, but one League Two side is set to dissuade those beliefs.
Nicknamed the Sulphurites for the town's healing sulfur springs, Harrogate Town will be playing in the Football League this season for the first time in its 106-year history. And the man responsible for this transformation also happens to be the longest-serving manager in English football.
USWNT star midfielders Sam Mewis and Rose Lavelle joined Manchester City in August. They’ve already got their new club within striking distance of winning the FA Women’s Cup.
Mewis scored her first City goal and Lavelle made her City debut in an impressive 2-1 win over Arsenal in the FA Women’s Cup semifinals on Thursday.
The Gunners had won their first three matches of the season by a combined 19-2, including a 4-0 rout of Alex Morgan’s Tottenham on Saturday.