As one of the oldest competitions around, it holds much romance and history. However, this season, we have reached the Semi-finals of this glorious competition to find one single team from the Premier league left. That team isn't even one of the so-called big teams in England, but Portsmouth, who up until this season had to fight to stay in the Premiership every year. But let's look at these so-called Big teams, Arsenal, Manchester United, Liverpool, Chelsea, and to some extent Everton and Tottenham in recent years. Arsenal were drubbed by Manchester United, Manchester United were shut out against Portsmouth, Liverpool were finally knocked out by Barnsley after suffering scares against non-league Havant and Waterlooville and Luton Town, Chelsea were also upset by Barnsley, Everton were taken out by Oldham and Tottenham were unceremoniously dumped by Manchester United.
With this being said, let us look at the UEFA champions league as a comparison, England can only send 4 teams to this competition, and all 4 have made it through to the quarter final at the expense of some of the greatest clubs in Europe, most noticeably the 2 Milan teams, AC and Inter, being taken out by Arsenal and Liverpool respectively. Now that we have seen this wide inconsistency in the English game, can we say that maybe the smaller teams are just better than the Big teams and if so, why aren't they in the Champions' League? This is of course assuming that all the teams in the FA cup are trying their best to win this historical trophy. That of course is the problem within itself. The FA Cup holds no incentive to the larger sized clubs in England. The big clubs stand to make much more in one round of the Champions' League than from winning the FA cup, so why bother fielding a full strength team and risk injury to a player that could help in the Champions League endeavour and earn the club much more money. This mentality doesn't apply to the lower tiered clubs as the ticket money they make in this competition is extremely important and the prize money wouldn't hurt either. So if there is such an apathy throughout the big clubs, then why doesn't the FA just cut them out of the whole competition? Mainly, because the smaller clubs stand to make a lot of money from a big team like Arsenal or Manchester United coming to play against them.
So what then is the solution? Should the FA put in a seeding system so that a Big Club is guaranteed to play a smaller club and help the smaller clubs financially? The only problem to this is the repetitive nature of seeding and as there is such a vast difference in level of play between a Premier League team in the top half of the table and a non-league side who is comprised of part timers. Not every club can be Havant and Waterlooville. Or maybe the FA could increase the incentive for winning the FA cup, for the mid table clubs, the promise of Europe is incentive enough to try, but for the club that is guaranteed a spot in Europe year after year, what incentive could the FA put in to get them to desire the FA cup for more than bragging rights? The FA could put more money into the prize money, but then that becomes money out of the funding for youth soccer, which everyone realises needs to drastically improve. The money would also come from the paychecks of the English manager, which would be all well and good if MacClaren was still managing England, because he should be paying the FA to have that job, but taking away cash from the pay of your coach means you will be stuck with a wally for manager because you cannot afford a top-notch tactician. I don't know what I would do if I were the FA, but it would be interesting to hear what you guys think the FA should do.
