THIN SLICE OF GLORY
No Vardy, but Fleetwood keeper Neal grabs pizza bonus for clean sheet...
A THIRD-ROUND tie that had promised the return of Jamie Vardy to the club that launched him to stardom and laid the foundations for his role in Leicester City’s fairytale Premier League title win two years ago seemed as though it would epitomise much of what has made the FA Cup such an enduring and evocative competition.
The attempt of a team that is 12th in League One, and plays beneath the cawing and screeching of seagulls taking refuge from the wilds of the Irish Sea, to upset a club that were the champions of England the season before last is the kind of contest that has always been the lifeblood of the Cup and Fleetwood Town’s Highbury Stadium was packed to the rafters.
It almost delivered its dream script in injury time when home forward Ashley Hunter twisted and turned on the edge of the Leicester box and fired in a low shot which took a deflection. Leicester keeper Eldin Jakupovic pushed the ball on to the post and nearly knocked it back into the net before clutching it gratefully.
The Fleetwood fans celebrated the goalless draw joyfully at the final whistle. Their team had acquitted itself well in its first test against a Premier League side and the result means that their club will enjoy the financial benefits of a replay at the King Power Stadium later this month.
‘We are a young organisation,’ their manager Uwe Rosler said after the game. ‘This was the biggest game in our history.’
So it would be wrong to be too curmudgeonly about what happened here. Fleetwood rose to the occasion magnificently, both on and off the pitch, and anything that boosts the health of lower league clubs has to be applauded. Still, it was hard to shake a nagging feeling that not all was as it should have been.
Vardy didn’t play, for a start. He was not on the starting line-up for The Vardy Derby, nor was he on the bench. The story that launched a thousand previews was a nonstarter.
It is not his fault that he has a groin injury but when his absence was set against the fact that Leicester boss Claude Puel made eight changes from the team that beat Huddersfield Town 3-0 on New Year’s Day, it could not help but devalue the match.
That is not a criticism of Leicester. It is up to Puel to manage his resources as he sees fit. Leicester did not lose, so it is hard to criticise his selection. The problem comes in the difference between the way the FA Cup is marketed by television companies and by the reality that confronts the rest of us.
The idea of giant-killings becomes obsolete when the giants don’t play their first team.
Sometimes, it is hard to see the logic of a manager making so many changes. This is a game Leicester would have won if they had played a full strength side. Now they are lumbered with another match in a busy period.
Credit their fans, at least, with laughing at the irony of the situation. ‘We’ve come for a draw,’ they sang deep in the second half. ‘We’ve come for a draw.’
Maybe we should have more sympathy with Puel. Last season, he guided Southampton to the final of the EFL Cup, where they lost to Manchester United, and he still got the sack. Perhaps he can be forgiven for being sceptical about the long-term benefits for his job security of a decent cup run. He took the pragmatic approach in Fleetwood and what we got was a game that only really hit full throttle in the dying minutes.
The rest of the game was largely attritional. Both sides struggled to make clear chances. Leicester’s toothlessness was particularly good news for Chris Neal.
Fleetwood’s new sponsor, Papa John’s, had promised the home goalkeeper a year’s supply of free pizza if he kept a clean sheet. Many
may have quibbled with their description of the incentive as the ‘ultimate match-day bonus’ but at least there were no staged photos of any players munching on meat pies during the tie.
The sponsor’s hopes of leading Neal into a Margherita and Quattro Staggioni-style escapade into Supersize Me territory was a curious offer to a professional athlete but it was, at least, still intact at the start of the second half as Leicester struggled to make their superior pedigree count. The Cod Army in the Memorial Stand behind the goal Fleetwood attacked in the second half sprung into bouncing, shouting life ten minutes into the second half when Hunter made a brilliant run down the left and forced Leicester into a last-ditch clearance.
Suddenly, Fleetwood piled on the pressure. Nathan Pond headed just over from one corner and when the home team forced another, Markus Schwabl connected sweetly with a left-foot drive which went through a crowded box and straight into the arms of Jakupovic.
Fleetwood poured on the pressure in the closing stages but could not quite force the winner they just about deserved. And so Neal gets to load up on thick crust funghi and pepperoni and the teams head back to the King Power for the replay Leicester did not want. It’s a kind of magic, I suppose.