Unless you've been living under a rock, or you're American or just some weirdo you'll know that Saturday gone hosted one of the biggest games of the footballing calendar, the 1,293,486,354th FA Cup Final. I think it was something more in the 120's, I was merely emphasizing that, as with Merseyside Derby's, there's always that inclination for commentators to tell you how many there's been before. As if we care! All we football fans want is our team in the final hopefully lifting the old silver pot at some point around 4:45, or should I say 7:30 if the sponsors have their say...
I've been watching FA Cup Finals since 1989 I've seen upsets, mismatches, goalfests and snoozefests. I've even had the privilege of attending one which unfortunately developed from being an upset into a goalfest. Here's ten that I've found memorable for all sorts of reasons.
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| Rush is on the left right?? |
1989 Liverpool v Everton
As an eight year old still finding my feet when it came to familiarising myself with the football calendar, imagine how excited I was to find out that there was a live game on TV at 3pm on a Saturday afternoon. Remember back then there was no internet, so no streaming games on your BBC or Acorn computer, no dodgy channels to watch down the local pub with Iranian commentary, any kids reading this (have I done the joke about kids not reading nowadays?? Yeah, see my first post...) you don't know you're born!! So not only was it pretty special to find myself watching a game on a Saturday afternoon, imagine how happy I was when it ended up being a dramatic goal glut. For those of you that have no idea what I'm talking about, probably most of you, Liverpool scored after only a few minutes through John Aldridge who then proceeded to spend the next 80+ minutes being more wasteful than an incompetent local council. Just when it looked like it was going to be a 1-0 final (god there's been tons of those) Stuart McCall popped up and equalised with minutes, if not seconds, to go. Liverpool promptly replaced Aldridge with his better look-a-like Ian Rush, who put them ahead in extra time, only for McCall to pop up again and equalise. Then Rush went and scored again and won it for Liverpool. 8 Year old Travis thought to himself, "This Cup Final lark is pretty entertaining!" Wait til next year Travis...
1990 Manchester United v Crystal Palace
My friends and I often debate which final was better out of this and the previous year, In my eyes this is/was the best FA Cup Final I've ever witnessed. For a start Steve Coppell did that clicky thing you did with your hands in the 90's to indicate that you found something pleasing (see 5:00 into the video). Naff 90's customs aside, the game was entertaining from start to finish, with Palace taking the lead early only to see United come back from behind and lead 2-1 in the second half. Enter super sub Ian Wright, the man who'd came into professional football late from a non-league side and would then go on to become Arsenal's all time top scorer (until Henry came along) and who would talk absolute nonsense at half time during World Cup games until Marcel "For Sure" Desailly came along. Wright scored twice to equalise then put Palace into the lead only for Mark Hughes to pop up and force the game to a replay. The replay was not a classic, Man United won with a winner from Lee Martin I think, whatever happened to him?
1994 Manchester United v Chelsea
In my time I've seen many a David versus Goliath football match and in my time I've seen many Davids fell Goliath. In May 1994 Goliath turned up, David shot him with with catapult, the rock bounced away with Goliath unaffected and Goliath then turned and squashed David with one mighty stomp. The only other Cup Final I remember being as one sided was Manchester United v Millwall (in 2004 I think), and that was understandable, that lot are useless! It didn't help Chelsea's cause that they seemed intent of giving Man United penalties at every opportunity possible. Definitely one of Wembley's mismatches.
1995 Everton v Manchester United
In 1995 David won! This Cup Final was prior to my sordid love affair with The People's Club but I still enjoyed the result. Man United had chucked the league title away the week before when they couldn't get past Ludek Miklosko ("He comes from near Moscow...") and the rest of the West Ham defence on the last day of the season. Even though they hadn't completely evolved into the winning machine that we have become accustomed to in the last 20 years, we all still wanted them to lose. And lose they did. The two things I remember most from this game were Paul Rideout stunning Wembley quite early in the first half, I genuinely couldn't believe Everton had scored at the time; and Neville Southall being ridiculously agile for a fat bloke, he pretty much kept United at bay for much of the 2nd half. What is it with fat blokes being deceptively agile when playing in goal?
1996 Manchester United v Liverpool
I swear this post isn't just A History of Manchester United's FA Cup Finals, it's testament to their success that they've appeared in so many in the last 20 years. The 1996 final was not one of their finest hours. This was my least favourite final, not just because of Liverpool's cream Armani suits, not because the game was awful, not because it was settled with the sound of Martin Tyler screaming, "CANTONA!" as he annoyingly always did by that point of the 90's (I'm not even sure he did the original commentary on the game as it would have been on BBC 1 but I've since heard his commentary on the game). But because it was the first cup final since 1989 that I didn't get to watch properly. My mum decided to take me shopping for new school trousers ON FA CUP FINAL DAY!! As you can imagine I was not pleased. My dad and I had the game on on the radio in the car and we did manage to rush home in time to see CANTONA! win it for United, I was not happy.
1997 Chelsea v Middlesbrough
Can you believe that back in 1997 I actually felt sorry for poor Chelsea (this was the same in 1990 with Man United). It just goes to show that as a kid you're an idiot. Back then they were useless though, I can remember them being promoted back to the top flight. I can remember how run down Stamford Bridge used to look, I also remember being a little excited when Ruud Gullit and Glen Hoddle (both in the twilights of their careers) signed for them. Had I known what the beast would have turned into I most certainly would have begrudged Di Matteo giving them the lead after just seconds against poor Middlesbrough. I can't even remember who scored the second Chelsea goal, for the record I don't want to remember.
2001 Liverpool v Arsenal
I didn't watch this one live as at the age of 20 I used to play cricket for a team on Saturday afternoons. As a person who likes Arsenal and has a strong dislike for Liverpool I would seem I didn't miss much. In the history books this will go down as Liverpool completing the second part of a historic, but two-bob, treble. I think the game is more significant as it gave many Arsenal fans, who were excited by the Arsene Wenger led revolution that had started at their club, a glimpse into the future of the club and how their many near misses with success would pan out in years to come. This was also the first FA Cup Final in The Millennium Stadium, two crimes were committed that day in Cardiff. The first one was Murder, Arsenal absolutely murdered Liverpool that day, I've not even seen the full 90 minutes but I can safely say from the footage I've seen the only place you'd experience more of a massacre would be in some sort of military dictatorship. The 2nd crime committed that day was Robbery. Arsenal were most certainly robbed of the cup that day (but to be fair it was their own fault), I'm pretty sure the engravers had already etched the "A-r..." on the base of the trophy when Owen popped up and got the first of his two goals. Robbery!
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| Not a bad view for £25 |
2006 Liverpool v West Ham
The only FA Cup final I've ever had the pleasure of attending. I'll start at the beginning, West Ham finally came good in 2006 and got to the Cup Final. There had been a near miss in 1991 when we were mauled by Nottingham Forest at Villa Park, the only time I've ever cried over a football match (in my defence I was 10), and there had been a quarter final in 1994 where we'd been humbled by plucky underdogs Luton Town (see my opinions on underdogs against West Ham in last week's 10 Things). Other than that we'd showed no signs of ever getting near Wembley or Cardiff, so imagine my delight when, after me saying in every round, "This is it, these are the guys that are going to knock us out..." we got to the final. Then the drama started, despite having an allocation of 23,000 tickets and only 22,000 season ticket holders (me being one of them), West Ham United managed to sell my ticket to somebody else amid rumours of fans being able to get more than one Cup Final Ticket per Season Ticket. Typical! Luckily, if there's one thing I like doing it's complaining, and after a sternly worded letter in which I said (no lie), "This whole episode has left me questioning my allegiance to a club that has taken plenty from me in the last 10 years but given nothing." We were given tickets by West Ham for just £25 each. So after much drinking and singing on a sunny afternoon in Wales, my friends and I found ourselves in the top row of the ground up in the gods behind one of the goals, we murmured Abide With Me, too drunk to read the words properly (the whole thing was not how I'd imagined it would be in my dreams when I was younger). The game kicked off and before I know it we're 2-0 up. Me being me, I didn't for second allow myself to believe we'd won the game at 2-0 and Liverpool soon proved me right, pulling the game back to 2-2 pretty soon after half time. The part of the game where I had thought we'd won was when Konchesky had put West Ham back ahead with the cross shot, I can still remember saying to myself, "20 seconds to go! I can't believe we've won the cup, 1964, 1975, 1980 and 200... Who's closing Gerrard down...?!?!"
2007 Chelsea v Manchester United
The first FA Cup Final back at Wembley, awful! But for the fact that I didn't have to go and try on new school trousers this was probably the worst I've seen. See 1996 and swap CANTONA! for DROGBA!
2008 Portsmouth v Cardiff
Another disappointing final for me. Stands out because I correctly predicted the score in both the Semi Finals and the Final but didn't have the nerve to put money on any of the games, damn my lack of nerve when it comes to gambling. This one was also a bit of a mismatch, Kanu tried to level things up by doing his best to not put the game to bed but Portsmouth got there in the end.
So that's it, 10 memorable FA Cup Finals, hopefully the FA will move next years edition (the 2,483,845,782nd Cup Final) back to it's proper time of 3pm on a Saturday afternoon. Oh, and can it be after the Premier League has finished please!
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