REMEMBER WHEN?
Grab your tinfoil trophy, rattle and big rosette, because the Proper FA Cup is back! We’re at the quarter-final stages, and things look very different this year with most of the usual suspects having already crashed out. Manchester City are the obvious playground bullies – although in their current state, the kind who can be seen off with a swift kick in the swingers. Still, even if we disregard the three FA Cups won in their Abu Dhabi era, City are still the most recent winners. So without further ado, let’s climb into the time machine and revisit each team’s Cup highlights …
1990: With all due respect to Crystal Palace’s 2016 vintage and Alan Pardew’s fateful self-aware shuffle, 1990 still feels like the pinnacle of their Cup dreams. Red and blue stripes, blazing sunshine. Brighty, Wrighty, hmm, isn’t it? Fly Virgin to LA, marvellous. Palace led twice but Manchester United fought back and then won the replay to keep Alex Ferguson in the Old Trafford hot seat.
1984: Bournemouth have never reached the FA Cup semi-finals, a statistic that might just change on Sunday. For now, their greatest Cup day remains 7 January 1984, when the third-tier Cherries shocked holders Manchester United at Dean Court. “It’s got to be the greatest day of my life,” cheered young Bournemouth manager Harry Redknapp. Wonder what he’s up to these days … oh good lord.
1983: Spandau Ballet’s ‘True’ rules the hit parade, Maggie Thatcher is about to win a second term, and Football Daily is newly available on Ceefax. In the FA Cup final, Manchester United face relegated Brighton. The Seagulls unexpectedly force extra time, when the ball falls to Gordon Smith in front of goal … but he muffs the finish, United win the replay and Brighton drift into the wilderness. Oh, football.
1975: Traditionally a sort of almshouse for fading football stars, second-tier Fulham make an unexpected run to the Cup final, where the Cottagers come up short and Bobby Moore has to watch his beloved West Ham lift the trophy in his final match at Wembley. Oh, football!
1969: Three months before Neil Armstrong walks on the moon, Manchester City lift the FA Cup as Neil Young (not that one) scores the winner against Leicester at Wembley. Having won the title the previous year, City would add a European trophy in 1970, setting the club up for years of trouble-free local domination.
1959: In one of Wembley’s stranger finals, mid-table sides Nottingham Forest and Luton duke it out in a game riddled by injuries. Forest hold on with nine fit players to win 2-1; at the final whistle, manager Billy Walker is mistaken for a pitch invader. Forest would go on to win trophies galore under Brian Clough, but never the FA Cup, even managing to lose a final to Spurs.
1957: In Britain, Harold Macmillan tells voters they’ve never had it so good. In Brazil, 16-year-old Pelé gets his first international call-up. And at Wembley, Aston Villa land their seventh FA Cup, beating Manchester United 2-1. Absolutely nobody predicts Villa will lift the European Cup before they win the FA Cup again. (And please enjoy this lovely interview with Peter McParland, scorer of both Villa goals that day, who is now 90 years old.)
1938: Preston North End face fellow pre-war heavyweights Huddersfield Town in the first televised final – a major blow to circulation figures for tea-timely football pink paper, Ye Olde Fyver. With the game goalless deep into extra time, BBC commentator Thomas Woodrooffe offers to eat his trilby if either team score. Preston immediately get a penalty, George Mutch scores, and Woodrooffe delivers on his promise by eating a hat-shaped cake live on TV. Absolute scenes.
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QUOTE OF THE DAY
“I left 40 degrees in Rio to go to -5 … the first time I trained I couldn’t finish the session because I was too cold. When I finished I would put my hands in like boiling water because they were almost frozen” – Evanilson tells Ben Fisher about his journey from Brazil to Bournemouth, via Slovakia and Portugal.
May I be the first of one to correct your prize-winning correspondent Jacob Zelten’s correction of Daniel Harris. In Hebrew (and in Yiddish which borrowed it) davka is not an adjective but actually an adverb that means ‘actually’. From which derives its use of someone who does something davka, to be contrary” – Yonatan Ginzburg (and no others).
Not one but two (!) transfer windows this summer. I’m looking forward to the slight desperation of 24-hour sports reporters standing in stadium car parks, repeating for the 15th time that no, they don’t have an update on Jadon Sancho’s rumoured new loan deal” – Nick Kinsella.
Re: Big Website’s story on Arsenal’s wooden shed – ‘A football kicked into it would be returned in an unpredictable direction, forcing the player doing the kicking to improvise a way of controlling it’ – being a secret weapon in training to win them the league. If this logic applied my team, Clyde, we would be in Big Cup rather than fighting a relegation battle in Scottish League Two; given that almost every pass in matches and, presumably training, lacks any kind of predictability” – Steven Rice.
Send letters to the.boss@theguardian.com. Today’s letter o’ the day winner is … Steven Rice, who gets a copy of Engulfed: how Saudi Arabia Bought Sport, and the World. It’s available in the Guardian Bookshop. Terms and conditions for our competitions, when we have them, can be viewed here.
