Sport Comment: Recreate sheen of FA Cup in Sir Tom Finney era
HAD Sir Tom Finney lived to see the weekend’s football, you wonder what he’d have made of it. Swathes of empty seats as the FA Cup supposedly reaches its serious stage, weakened sides being selected by various clubs, and one of the “best” examples of simulation in recent times that earned Stevan Jovetic a booking in Manchester City’s deserved victory over a lame and tame Chelsea on Saturday night.
The FA Cup is not what it was. How could it be? When it was, there was no Champions League and no Premier League. Cliff Richard was never the same after The Beatles came along. In Sir Tom’s time, Wembley in May was the biggest day of the year, and players would talk of happily exchanging a cup winner’s medal for a league title. Now it’s a tag-on to nine months of endless intrigue and jousting for supremacy that enthrals the world.
So what to do? The first thing the Football Association should demand is that ticket prices for all its cup ties are slashed. £20/10/5. Make these the games anybody can go to. Create an atmosphere by filling grounds. And for all the talk of television calling the shots, insist that all matches bar one are played at the same time on the same day. Recreate FA Cup day. Make us care, because at the moment many people have understandably got better things to do. Like watch curling.
And Jovetic? Well, in the mealy mouthed way that football in this age deals with things, and light years away from the integrity of Finney, he was booked for simulation at around 6:30pm on ITV. Had he waited an hour, he’d have won the final of Splash. Apologies for returning to an old theme, but if cheating was punished with a straight red card, would players really run the risk of being dismissed? And how much easier would the referee’s job be?
Football wasn’t better in Sir Tom’s day; it was different. It’s just that some of those differences were better.