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The Football Association Challenge Cup, or more commonly known as, The FA Cup, is alive and kicking, friends. Lower level teams travel to the big boys hoping to slay the giant and make a name for themselves. The big clubs hope to avoid the embarrassment of being knocked out by a club several tiers below them, it has the makings of fairy tales written all over it.
So what exactly is the FA Cup? And how does it work? Well, The Football Association Challenge Cup is the world’s oldest soccer tournament. It’s played during the course of the season from August until May and is made up entirely of English soccer clubs. The competition also has a sponsor, so the “official” name is the Emirates FA Cup. Emirates has been the official sponsor since 2015.
The competition is named after England’s governing soccer organization, the Football Association. It made its debut in the 1871-72 season and has been played every single season, with the exception of the seasons during the two World Wars.
The FA Cup is open to any club from the Premier League all the way down to the 10th level of English soccer. All 92 clubs in the Premier League, EFL Championship, EFL League One, and EFL League Two are entered at different stages of the tournament. The first six rounds of the competition are qualifying rounds where eligible lower teams battle it out to be one of the 32 to advance to the First Round Proper, where they face off against teams from League One and League Two.
Premier League and Championship clubs enter the tournament in the Third Round Proper. Each round’s games are selected via a random drawing. No seeding, or previous results matter. If you win, you go through to the next round, and your club is entered into the drawing. This is where the fun happens. If a lower division team can get drawn against one of the big boys from the Premier League, which is very exciting, it could mean a big payday for them. The gate receipts (paid ticket sales) are split 50/50, and to most lower-level teams, that is a HUGE payday.
The final game is played at Wembley Stadium in London.
The FA Cup holds so much romanticism and fun because occasionally you’ll see a lower level team that has players who all have second jobs (electricians, plumbers, contractors, etc.), who get to live out their childhood dreams of running out onto a Premiership stadium and playing the game they love.
The biggest ever upset in the FA Cup came in the 1991 season. Woking, who played in the Isthmian League (level 8 within the pyramid of English soccer) were drawn to play against West Bromwich Albion who was currently in the second division. Woking beat West Brom 4-2, and it’s since been put into a model that if the game were played 15.9M times, Woking would only win once. Once! Well, on that fateful day in 1991, the soccer Gods shined down brightly on Woking, and they walked away victors. Victors who all went back to their day jobs the next day….
This past weekend saw English League Championship (the league below the Premiership) side Nottingham Forest (9th in the table) beat Arsenal (5th in the Premiership) 1-0. Not exactly a giant-killing, but big enough to make waves in the soccer community.
The first-ever winners of the FA Cup were Wanderers FC, which dissolved in 1887.
The most successful club in FA Cup history is Arsenal FC. Arsenal has won 14 FA Cups overall, with their last win coming in 2020.
The 2020-21 Winners of the FA Cup were Leicester City as they beat Chelsea 1-0 on May 15, 2021. They beat Watford FC over the weekend, and are onto the 4th round and hoping to be repeat winners.
The 2022 FA Cup Final will be played on May 14.
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