I love the FA Cup, I fucking love it. While the defeatist, cynical left-wing British press bitches and moans about how these days, the World's Oldest Knock-Out Competition produces as much excitement as Ben Stein reading aloud from the collected works of Charles Dickens in the middle of a knitting circle, the reality is the Cup offers a unique opportunity for the rest of the world to stare into the slightly-clogged-but-still-chugging heart of British sport culture.
Today was an amazing example. While I was a bit distracted from the proceedings at the New Wembley due to the power-point presentation I had to put on to explain to my girlfriend why a Welsh club was allowed to compete for an English trophy, the excitement was there to be seen: tens of thousands of fans crammed into a billion-dollar fishbowl in the heart of London, all collectively convinced this was still a big deal. The simulacrum of glory had some mighty helpings of Power and Gas courtesy of sponsors E-On, along with the trademark, euphoria-inducing hype from BSkyB and the stiff-upper-lipped Beebs, the latter there to remind domestic viewers that they were watching Hope and Glory embodied in ninety minutes of hoof-and-chase.
The match was a lively bout between eleven copies of this man from the South Shore (and no Canadian readers [if any], I'm not referring to the particularly noxious brand of nationalist anglophone from Le Riviere Sud in Montreal), and some people-shaped versions of this. A few pirouettes from Kanu and a nostalgic Enckelman error (those were the days!) put Portsmouth One-Up over Cardiff, enough for them to give the the Cup the old hoist-and-kiss.
The FA Cup, much like its belittled and web-toed cousin the Community Shield, is there to bookend the league season by showcasing the best and worst day-to-day, grind-em-out football has to offer. As such, it tends to be smothered in large dollops of canned narrative. With the absence of the Big Four in the final this year thanks to the bookie-baiting antics of Barnsely, the David and Goliath angle was put into overdrive to salvage the ratings and charge things up in anticipation of an overly-cautious dirge.
It wasn't to be. Both sides attacked well and seemed happy just to be there, in stark contrast to the wussed-out dud between United and Chelsea last year. It's a shame is that this final will likely be a blip on the slithery path to complete domination of football by the moneyed-classes (although some disagree), but at least we can take heart that moments like this are still possible. It is a ninety-minute ball game after all.
Quantum physics tells us that, although highly unlikely, there remains the possibility that gas particles will suddenly all end up together in one corner of a contained space. Such a beautiful and mind-bending event won't come along often, so good play to the participants for not trying to draw out the moment with cynical play. As Danny Blanchflower once put it: "Football is about glory, it is about doing things in style and with a flourish, about going out and beating the lot, not waiting for them to die of boredom..." I'm happy to say I've lived to (badly) tell the tale.
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