Aston Villa, Cup Competitions and the Relativity of Meaning

It is an odd sort of debate, given that everyone knows the cups no longer possess the same prestige they once did (when, as previously discussed, the F.A. Cup was the only live soccer on broadcast television, giving it an outsize importance in the public consciousness).

It is often the elite — probably rightly — that are blamed for instigating that decline, though it is telling that most coaches, regardless of their team’s situation, tend to use these games as an opportunity to field youth-team and fringe players.

Ascribing guilt to the greedy Premier League titans, though, tends to frame the issue in a specific way. To most, the demise of the cups is about money. The giants disdain it because it is insufficiently lucrative. The riches on offer in the Premier League blind everyone to the fact that the game is about glory.

(Klopp and Pep Guardiola seem sincere in their belief that, to them at least, the problem is more about overworking their players, but again: The elite have gobbled up all the best players, with their money, meaning other teams are too weak to compete, even in one-off games).

That, in turn, means that the solutions on offer are, mostly, financial. Perhaps increasing the prize money would help? Perhaps abolishing replays would be acceptable, but only if the lower-league teams had a greater share of gate receipts, or took home all of the television revenue, or had greater solidarity payments from the Premier League?

All of this is true, of course, but it is not the root of the issue. No, at heart, the problem with the domestic cups — across Europe — is not money, but meaning. The F.A. Cup does not mean anything: not to players, few of whom now would remember the competition in its heyday; not to owners, who did not invest in the sport on the off-chance of a cup run; and not, most important, to fans, who have both consumed and perpetuated a dialogue for 20 years about how the Premier League is the be all and end all, the best league in the world, the only thing that matters. (The Carabao Cup, regardless of its sponsor, has never really mattered, if we are all honest.)

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/31/sports/soccer/fa-cup-carabao-cup-aston-villa.html?emc=rss&partner=rss