Alongside a few million other viewers around the country I tuned in to the One Show last week, eagerly anticipating the FA cup draw to find out who the minnows, Sutton United and Lincoln City, might land in the fifth round.
Prior to the draw, a young fan was asked what his dream tie would be to which he replied (as close as I can remember) ‘Man City away, I guess’
‘Why?’ the presenter pressed.
‘For the money.’
It took me by surprise. The young fan was less than ten years old.
The FA Cup, a tournament that gives every team in the country the chance to play at Wembley Stadium and lift a trophy steeped in history, is everything a young fan should dream of.
Every football fan will have a different story, their own personal history with the cup. Reminiscing your time as a youth following the cup will leave any football fan with their eyes glistening over; tales of waking up on a Saturday morning with butterflies of excitement, bustling through the turnstiles in the afternoon and hearing the buzz of excitement as your team bids to enter the next round.
Magic moments have been created by the cup. Perhaps not many spring to mind as a Norwich fan in recent years but every year there is a story for the history books. So why should any young fan care about the money?
Whether you’re Chelsea or Sutton United, to hell with the money. The FA cup is about memories, passion, the love of the game and the romance of the cup.
It’s about Ryan Giggs dancing his way past six defenders and lashing a fierce shot past David Seaman. It’s about Steven Gerrard releasing a shot like a bow from an arrow in the final against West Ham.
‘For the money’ indeed.
Whether the injection of money into football has ruined the game is another debate. What it has done has progressed the sport into an athletic pursuit. The game is tactically more intricate than many would have thought possible. The speed of the Premier League is incomparable to the old Division One in the nineties.
Money has advanced football because of the amount that’s now at stake. Whether it is more exciting is again, debatable because what one fan finds intriguing another might not. What is clear though is that money has created a bigger wedge between the top tier of English Football and those in the leagues below it.
Has money improved the game for the younger audience?
Some of the older (more cultured) readers will have to help me out with this one but years ago, fans found footballers approachable; they were part of the community and you could find them down the pub after the game, chatting with the locals.
For footballers now, community work is part and parcel of the job. I’m sure some players enjoy giving back to the community but by and large it’s part of what pays their wage. Young fans cannot identify with players anymore because their lifestyles are worlds apart.
Even at Norwich, youth players turn up to the ground in personalised Audi’s, an issue which is pressing the wider debate of young English players being given too much too soon.
How can a young fan identify with the stars of their team when the youth players are driving around in cars which cost the area’s average annual salary?
This young fan is experiencing football in an era where advertising and maximising match-day revenue is rife within the top tiers. Sky, BT, Nike, Adidas, the betting companies, they are all redistributing their wealth within the top clubs so they can purchase the most marketable players, selling endorsement deals, image rights, channel subscriptions, the lot.
It then becomes a poor indictment on the state of our game that fans less than ten years old are thinking of the money before anything else.
Yes, it might have been a throwaway comment. Yes, it might have been fed through his dad but it serves to illustrate the wider issue that young fans are being brought up buying into the monetisation of the game, consuming the advertising that’s fed through their football clubs and not experiencing the purity of football.
So does what does the cash injection do for that young fan?
In reality that money will do a whole host of good for Sutton United. We caught a glimpse of what life is like for that calibre of club in the Salford City documentary, The Class of 92. A single pay-out for the fifth round of the FA cup can bring stability to a club which by and large could be operating on a hand to mouth existence.
That money might give that young fan the opportunity to watch his beloved Sutton United through to his teens and beyond. Still, it’s for the club owners to worry about that. Commercialisation has both transformed and killed football.
It has turned the Premier League and major cups into revenue-generating behemoths and at the same time, tarnished the grass-roots level of the game.
I’m not entirely averse to the state of football because the bare facts are there for all to see: it’s a business opportunity. Fans follow their team as passionately as others would a religion, it’s a money making opportunity.
Young fans however, should be kept immune from this. A young fan should be watching the FA Cup draw, desperate for the fixture of his dreams.
Not the chance to play a soulless brand in the hope of a payday.
This will sound awful, but the biggest problem the FA Cup has is its competing with the Premier League, where the prize for finishing 20th is a mere £100m.
Everything else is small change, both for those teams in the lower half of the Premier League, or in, or around, the play off places in the Championship.
Hardly surprising that team selections tend to reflect other priorities come FA Cup days.
There’s a lot I would argue with in this piece – such as kids not identifying with footballers not being a new thing by any stretch – but the sentiment is spot on. I really wish the FA, teams and supporters could accept the cup should be played for what it is – a knockout competition, not some path/barrier to riches. When was the last time we watched NCFC play a cup game like the result actually mattered? Why can’t we play our first team and tell them ‘this means everything to the fans and that’s how you should play it”. Too much to ask?
Good piece Matthew, and spot-on with the malaise of the current set-up.
I can remember when the only opportunity to see a live game on TV was when the FA Cup final was broadcast. Unfortunately because of the input from Sky; BT and co, it’s far too easy now to become an armchair only fan, and I’m sure this is why our streets are full of local youngsters wearing the colours of Man U; Chelsea; Arsenal; Barcelona etc., rather than their local team.
A number of “experts” are saying that the whole thing may begin to implode starting with the next round of TV money. In that same vein it is interesting that UEFA are insisting that in future Champions League matches must be available on free to view TV.
As Cityfan says, why is it so difficult for our club to play a “proper” cup game/team? I cannot believe that NCFC have played as many matches this season as Sutton or Lincoln ….
O T B C
Good piece Matthew.
The riches of the Premier league are at a peak. We will soon be witnessing a sea change with China emerging as the honeypot for Sky, etc.
Footballers here at the top levels will always be well paid but not as well as they are today.
My FA Cup memories, as for many, are my footballing memories. Ask me to name who won the cup from 1964 – 1992 and I’ll get 80% right but would struggle to recall who won the league. What a change the Premiership has bought, stolen the romance of our beloved FA Cup by forcing football to sell its soul for £££££££££’s.
As a kid I stood on the terraces at Clarence Park St Albans to watch my team St Albans City play Wycombe Wanderers in a 1st round replay in front of over 8,000 fans, will never forget it. We won,drew with Wallsall in round 2 and were drawn to play Spurs if we won the replay. Missed School, travelled to Wallsall on a Tuesday…..we got beat but my goodness over 47 years later I still recall the whole experience.THe fans of Sutton can feel this way today for there team but sadly if you choose to support a ‘big club’ no such joy will come your way all because of greed.
As a fan I couldn’t care less about money or the Premiership. I love Norwich City and will support us whatever the division or cup we are playing in. At least we’ve had our days at Wembley but if I was offered an F A Cup Final win next season together with relegation to league 1, i’d take the FA Cup win every day of the week.
I disagree with your example. If you had a Championship team’s fan saying they wanted City for the money, that’s one thing. The money isn’t that big a deal.
For Sutton Utd. this could mean financial security or new players.
You gave two examples of what the FA cup means but both were from PL points of view. Sutton know they’re not going to win it. In their minds they have won it. They’ll have a great day out, they’ll see some fantastic players, and they’ll get a boat load of cash. The fifth round is already a dream come true for them.
It’s a dream for us.
There’s nothing new in a non-league team hoping for a big payday, especially when they’ve got to round 5 and whoever they draw they are very unlikely to progress any further.
Money has ruined the FA Cup though – not FA Cup money itself, but the lure of the millions on offer in the Premier and Champions Leagues.
That’s why Derby and Leicester made so many changes last night; Derby don’t want to jeopardise their play-off chances whilst Leicester have both their League position and the Champions League to worry about. Sadly a lot of fans, well ours certainly, totally agree with that attitude.
And as we all know there are other consequences of the riches on offer to young players (at least 80 of whom sit on a Premier League bench for 90 minutes every week).
I’ve just read that the lad scoring a hatful on loan for Bristol City is facing charges relating to crashing his Merc. That’s right, his Merc – he’s 19 for goodness sake!
I was nearly 50 before I could afford a Merc – though as it happens I’ve got better taste anyway and bought an Audi instead.
As Gary Field (1) says, it’s not the FA Cup that’s the problem – it’s the money associated with league status. Especially if you’re trying to maintain your place in the Premier League, or get to it.
The importance of that status, far greater than it was in years gone by, means you want your best players as fresh as possible for any league game.
The intensity of league games is also greater than before; it’s really challenging for a player to maintain effectiveness through 38 (or in our case 46) league games, let alone Cups.
People wonder why the NFL regular season is only 16 games. Look at the state of the players by the end of that season and you can see why.
PS I agree with Dave B (5)!
(6), Keith B, cannot agree with our taste. A Merc (of the non-sporting variety) is a much smoother proposition than an Audi with is wooden suspension. But, yes, I too, was almost 50 before I could afford to take that particular plunge.
And I’ve got football books from the sixties bemoaning the wealth of footballers and their sports cars. I have some from the fifties criticising footballers for not being part of their communities.
This has been going on a very long time and will carry on.
Part of the reason it is still a problem is that fans have not adapted to the modern age. We still expect players to care about the club like they did when they travelled to games on the bus with fans. We expect loyalty and badge kissing from people who now are generally no more connected to their employer than we are to ours.
Football is constantly evolving whether we like it or not. Personally, I don’t but it happens anyway. We fans need to accept that and stop being hurt when players don’t live up to our outdated expectations.
9) Absolute sense. Hooray.