It will be a long time coming, if at all, before the last rites are administered to the FA Cup.
The world’s oldest football competition is a cherished institution and even though it has lost a good percentage of its lustre in recent years it retains a special place in the British sporting pantheon.
There is the NHS, Coronation Street and the FA Cup. Only these three pillars of life would prompt a usually tepid public to take to the streets if scrapped.
Yet, for all of its undoubted romanticism and proven ability to produce unique drama, there is the small matter of cold, hard reality to acknowledge and that reality tells us that each and every year the FA Cup takes up some prime real estate on the footballing calendar.
It is real estate other, more lucrative tournaments would dearly like to make a landgrab for as the fixture list continues to get ever-more condensed.
The chances of that happening has previously felt slight but regrettably that is no longer the case as concerns grow that the football schedule is becoming far too crowded and this has become a real problem for the competition of late, through no fault of its own.
Within the game, and extending to the public and fans, there is an increasing worry that footballers are being flogged to exhaustion and injury, and with two games a week now the norm we turn to the domestic competitions to offer up some respite.
Already the League Cup has streamlined, with the bigger teams no longer entering until later rounds and an elimination of the two-legged semi-final imminent. As for the FA Cup, in 2018 the decision was made to dispense with replays from the fifth round onwards.
Will third and fourth round replays go the same way? Sadly, that feels inevitable at this point, especially with the expansion of the Champions League coming into effect from next season.
Granted, there is a huge and distasteful irony at play here, that amidst a concerted attempt to reduce the burden on players, the FA Cup must cede to a competition adding greater fixtures to its roster.
But again we go back to cold, hard realities. So lucrative is the Champions League, and so box-office, it can frankly do what it likes.
So it is that from next term, the prestigious continental competition expands to 36 teams and to make that feasible the group stages will encroach into January. That’s FA Cup territory.
More pertinently, it is also FA Cup third round replay territory, a financial boon for smaller clubs but a nuisance for Premier League fare.
The writing therefore appears to be on the wall.
Will dispensing with replays across every round be sufficient in maintaining the standing and statue of a beloved competition? Possibly, and probably in the short-term at least, but then we recall the events of last summer and further doubts arise.
That’s because last July a deal was put forward by the Premier League to secure the overseas TV rights for the FA Cup, a deal that was not formally agreed upon though the Football Association gave it serious conversation.
The deal would have given the Premier League – and by extension, Premier League clubs – much more say in how the FA Cup is shaped and is, to the best of our knowledge, still a viable proposition.
Included in the terms were a series of ‘demands’ that offer a depressing insight into how the big clubs view the tournament, and how they would ideally like to see it survive but in a diminished capacity.
It was proposed that all replays should be scrapped. It was recommended that early rounds of the competition should be allotted a midweek slot. Alarmingly, the final would be moved to the penultimate weekend of the season, with a full league schedule taking place the following day.
The Premier League would also have gained greater traction in their desire to move games away from the BBC and ITV to the highest bidder.
It has long been felt that the FA Cup needs to adapt or die. Conversely, these adaptions could kill it.
Because we should think of the minnows, outsiders in the FA Cup betting, who would be deprived of a chance to cause an upset before a weekend audience of many millions.
We should think of the final, a fixture of high-esteem and history that deserves and needs a weekend given over to it. Make the competition a secondary concern and in due course that’s what it would become.
Let’s boil it down to language we all understand. In terms of sports betting, the future of the FA Cup is nailed on.
But for it to survive and thrive in its present incarnation feels like very long odds indeed.
*Credit for all of the photos in this article belongs to Alamy*
