Falsely elevating FA Cup could ruin Premier League
As half-baked solutions go, revamping the FA Cup by giving its winners a place in the Champions League could only have come from the type of brains trust found at the very top of English football.
Poorly conceived, potentially ruinous, economically dangerous and sloppily short-term. It would solve one problem only to create a raft of far bigger ones and wouldn’t last more than a couple of years before its obvious flaws forced a complete rethink.
The harmful after- effects, however, could drag on, and possibly for decades. Oh yes, it’s one of ours all right. Think of Greg Dyke’s B teams or the Football League’s ham-fisted diktats over financial fair play. Falsely elevating the status of the FA Cup is right up there.
Indeed, it is such an ill-considered knee-jerk of a plan that Michel Platini would no doubt have got around to it eventually, if FIFA’s ethics committee had not got around to him first.
Finally, we have reached a stage where the top four places are opening out as they used to, embracing as many as 10 or 12 teams. Leicester City are top, Tottenham Hotspur are title contenders, Chelsea, last season’s champions, are bottom half and southampton and West Ham must fancy their chances of finishing above a labouring Manchester United.
so what are we now discussing? Taking away the fourth place that is the likeliest entry point for the new Champions League contenders and giving it to the winners of a cup competition that traditionally preserves the status quo.
In 21 of the last 25 seasons, the FA Cup has been won by four clubs: Liverpool, Manchester United, Arsenal and Chelsea. Also victorious, the fabulously wealthy Manchester City. In the last quarter of a century, only Everton in 1995, Portsmouth in 2008 and Wigan Athletic in 2013 can be considered to have come from outside the traditional elite.
Giant-killings take place in the early rounds, but rarely in the final.
so, yes, if a Champions League place was also on offer, the major teams would most certainly take it seriously. Manchester United, for instance, would see it as their best chance of unlikely success this season. Out of the Champions League in December, six points adrift of fourth place in the Premier League and now trailing to Midtjylland in the Europa League, the FA Cup would be a lifeline.
Yet would they merit that? so far, United have eliminated sheffield United and Derby County and now face shrewsbury for a place in the last eight.
suppose Leicester shoot for the moon and fall short, drop demoralised in the final weeks to fourth place. And then up come Manchester United. Useless, over-privileged United, fresh from the slaughter of shrewsbury and other also-rans to claim Leicester’s Champions League spot. Would that be fair, to prop up the FA Cup this way?
Platini gave the winners of the failing Europa League a place in the Champions League the following season and it was the right move. The two were already linked with thirdplaced group stage teams from the bigger competition joining the Europa League’s last 32 — and that secondary prize was still hard to win.
Last season’s Europa League champions, sevilla, had to get past standard Liege, HNK Rijeka, Feyenoord, Borussia Monchengladbach, Villarreal, Zenit st Petersburg, Fiorentina and Dnipro Dnipropetrovsk.
That is a much tougher route than the winners of the FA Cup will face, and far more conducive to being comfortable in elite European competition. Two of the teams that sevilla defeated, Zenit and Monchengladbach, joined them in the Champions League group stage through domestic qualification routes this season.
Yet, for argument’s sake, let’s say the FA Cup is not won by an elite team. Let’s say it goes to Reading and they claim a Champions League place. English football is now in a position where, with its co- efficient numbers falling, and its fourth Champions League spot in jeopardy, the 16th best team in the Championship could be among its representatives in Europe’s most important tournament. Reading, entering UEFA competition for the first time, would get a tough draw and could fail to make it out of the qualifying stage. Maybe England’s co-efficient ranking would slip below Italy, who would claim the extra fourth place. Now England would have three Champions League representatives, with one of them being the random winner of the FA Cup.
so, while Germany, Italy and spain would put their four best teams into the Champions League, England would offer places to the top two, plus one.
Yes, there would be the odd humdinger FA Cup quarter-final as clubs scrambled for that financial bonus, but the Premier League would lose its cachet, the wider excitement at the top and, in time, its commercial revenue as a result.
Would it be worth the level of investment required to keep an elite team competitive if the prizes on offer were reduced? Would it be worth rich men taking a chance at Manchester City, Chelsea, Arsenal, Manchester United, Tottenham or Liverpool, if only the top two made it to the Champions League, and the rest were at the mercy of a dodgy pitch in Exeter?
Before long there would either be a drain, a slowing of investment or an exit. And not just of owners, either. Good players and coaches want Champions League football, too. And they would get it in the foreign leagues that maintained a sense of priority.
Martin Glenn, the FA chief executive, talked of a Champions League place adding lustre to his competition, but he hasn’t thought this through. What Glenn (below) wants is to see Liverpool or Arsenal at full strength in the FA Cup again, and no doubt he means well. Yet any importance that was added to the FA Cup would be stripped from the Premier League and, in time, the Champions League.
It may no longer be the exclusive preserve of champions, but it remains the greatest competition in club football and certainly not the territory of those who swung a lucky punch, or the hardy conquerors of shrewsbury. Think again,
gentlemen.