I felt lucky to be at home on Sunday. For all kinds of reasons. Fortunately to attend the drama of a giant FA Cup killer. Fortunately to feel the passion of a crowd in a club that always values its own fans more than tourists and excursionus.
Fortunately to be in a club which is proud of its own regional identity. Fortunately to sit in the magnificent Mayflower gallery with his echoes in the history of the club. Fortunately to see what result as the victory of Plymouth Argyle over Liverpool means for a local community.
Fortunately to live a day that illuminated the best of our game. Fortunately to feel the kind of emotions that are an integral part of a football competition which, despite the best efforts of the elite, simply refuses to die.
Sometimes, he may have the impression that FA Cup represents a missing world, a last vestige of tradition in a sport whose broadcasters claim to have started in 1992 and whose money manufacturers saw more lucrative opportunities elsewhere.
Sometimes he has the impression that the competition is constantly devalued and missing. Managers pay the lip service to his magic because they know that he will not play well if they do not do so, but their actions speak more than their words.
Arne Slot gave her first team on the day of leave on Sunday. He even included any of them in the team that went to the West Country. He chose a second team for the FA Cup because Liverpool has five games in the next 15 days and they have larger priorities.
Home Park had a passion for a crowd in a club that always values its own fans more than tourists and day excursions
It was a day that illuminated the best of our game while Plymouth Argyle eliminated Liverpool
Arne Slot has chosen a second string Liverpool side – their priorities are currently elsewhere
So when I listened to BBC Radio 5 live on the return of Plymouth, I listened to the phone in the phone of Robbie Savage and Chris Sutton and heard Savage talk to a fan of Plymouth. “Congratulations for defeating Liverpool’s reserves,” he said.
And he was right. Plymouth had beaten Mighty Liverpool, but it was not the best Liverpool available. And it is not the slot fault. His priorities are the Premier League and the Champions League. His players have a crazy schedule and something must give. And something, most often, is the FA Cup.
Some have estimated, in fact, that Liverpool’s defeat at Home Park could actually be a disguised blessing for Slot and his team. Liverpool has more large fish to fry and fight on a less forehead will give tired players the possibility of recovering by pursuing brighter prices.
It corresponds to a context where tournament traditions are eroded. UEFA has established a European super European league in the form of the constant expansion champions League and our elite clubs are attached to a calendar that tries to get the life out of everything else.
The FA Cup is always a showcase for the best that our game has to offer and yet the Fa itself betrays it with diplomas and the Premier League, which sees threats for its greed everywhere, tries to kill it. When the president of Crystal Palace, Steve Parish, spoke of a battle between supermarkets and corner stores, it was the voice of the elite.
The FA and the Premier League will deny this, of course, but the facts tell a different story. The abolition of reruns by the FA, its propagation of matches in the fourth round over five days and its movement of the FA Cup final in the penultimate weekend of the season are all betrayals.
And yet, despite all this, despite the betrayals and weakness and compromise and the cowardice of people who direct the game, the FA Cup continues to challenge them because it continues to prosper.
It was the other that was so beautiful to be in Home Park on Sunday. It was to realize that what those who have become disconnected with the English game do, as blinded as they have become, English football fans love the FA Cup to let it be withered.
Arne Slot players have a crazy schedule and something must give – he was right to change his team
Of course, Liverpool played a second team in Plymouth, so the giant Killing was not quite the same as what it was when Hereford beat Newcastle United and Wimbledon organized a Leeds United team Who featured Peter Lorimer, Billy Bremner, Jonny Giles, Paul Madeley and the rest of the selection of the first choice of Don returns.
And maybe some of the fans of Home Park have been disappointed not to see Mo Salah and Virgil Van Dijk run to Liverpool Colors. But this disappointment took place when the final whistle blew and when it was written in the records that their team had broken Liverpool.
The result has always played our love of oppressed. It was still a black eye for the giants. There was still something on the occasion that happened to the core of the attraction of the cup: that ordinary players of the clubs of the lower league with edifying stories and lives that are almost like yours and that mine Can fight with the golden elite and sometimes they can come up.
This is why the Premier League and UEFA will find it difficult to kill the FA Cup. Because the competition is at the heart of what we love in football and it is at the heart of what gives English football its unique sale argument.
The elite thinks that our unique sales argument is the Premier League, but this is not the case. What makes English football special is its pyramidal system. It is the depth of our game, the fact that eight clubs of our medium -sized crowds of more than 7,000 this season.
At the third level, two clubs on average more than 20,000 for their crowd. Five more on average more than 10,000. It is in League 1.. The disease of the Premier League is that they consider this as a competition not as a brotherhood of football.
The beauty of our league is in its combination of powerful clubs like Manchester United and Liverpool and Arsenal and local teams like Plymouth and Stockport County and Carlisle United and Grimsby Town.
Most football fans in this country know this. They love their own team, but at a certain level, they like what our game also represents. The best of it lies in the FA Cup and people who measure only things only in money will not be able to kill it, whatever their difficult test.
Plymouth fans may have been disappointed not to have seen Virgil Van Dijk and Mo Salah, but who evaporated full-time
The best in football lies in the FA Cup and people who only measure things in money will not be able to kill it
Mission Impossible?
I do not think that I have completely the desire to try to follow the different missions and projects that arise from Old Trafford now that the influence of Sir Dave Brailsford grew up in Manchester United.
Until now, the only tangible effect of Mission 1, which is based on the United Women’s team, winning the WSL, has been to drive Alan in Brazil on the edge of a live hernia on Talksport.
Mission 21, you will be surprised to know, revolves around the ambition of the men’s team winning another first League title. No one had ever thought of doing this before Sir Dave came. It is a blue sky thought for you.
Disadvantages, Brailsford helped lead to United in 13th place in the table, closer to the last three than the first four. So maybe we don’t all understand the mission statement. Perhaps Mission 21 means that Sir Dave is committed to winning the next title before the end of this century.
Rasmus Hojlund might even have scored another goal by then.
Sir Dave Brailsford wants Manchester United to win the Premier League – but they are closer to the relegation zone than the Premier League
No one had never thought of doing so before Sir Dave’s arrival – and Ruben Amorim was clear about the amount of work that needs to do
Sancho lifts eyebrows
When Marcus Rashford left Manchester United on loan for Aston Villa and made his debut this weekend, Jadon Sancho published a message in a word on the Instagram flow of Rashford. He said, simply, “freedom”.
Since Sancho, who is loaned to Chelsea, is still a united player, it is not surprising that certain Old Trafford supporters are less impressed by his attitude.
They paid the player’s salary, out of time, for three years, for very little in return.
Liberation works in both directions. I suspect that they will be happy to be closed with him when Chelsea makes his move permanent in summer.
Marcus Rashford published a series of photos on social networks after his beginnings at Aston Villa, to which Sancho commented: “ Liberté ”
United and their fans will probably be happy when Sancho joins Chelsea permanently in summer
Nothing like sport
I was in Twickenham on Saturday for the superb victory of England in terms of victory over France and the best player in the world, Antoine Dupont.
Sunday morning, I went down to the West Country to attend Liverpool of Plymouth Argyle and to revel in the rich culture of English football. Tuesday, I will be in Manchester to see City face Real Madrid by Vini Jr, Federico Valverde and Jude Bellingham. And Wednesday, I will say what could be goodbye to one of the great cathedrals of our game, Goodison Park, when Everton meets Liverpool in the Merseyside derby.
Very, very occasionally, I may have to remember how lucky I am to work in something as captivating and rich and unpredictable and inspiring as the world of sport, but that does not often happen.