The FA Cup still has an important place. This weekend was proof

Ross Stewart, Pep Guardiola, and Ben White in FA Cup action this past weekend. Composite: Guardian Pictures (via REX/Shutterstock/Getty) The soccer calendar has been particularly quirky this year. There’s always an international break in March, but because this year’s edition involved World Cup qualifying play-offs, most games were scheduled for the Thursday and the Tuesday, which meant there was very little soccer played over the weekend; barely even a smattering of friendlies.

Related: FA Cup quarter-finals: talking points from the men’s and women’s weekend ties For a Saturday in early spring, it all felt very weird; it was a day for pacing the floors, wondering how on earth people who don’t like soccer fill the time. And with the Carabao Cup final falling the previous Sunday, and the FA Cup sixth round this weekend, that has meant a three-week hiatus in the title race. Which has been disorienting and, perhaps, not entirely to Arsenal’s benefit.

The Premier League dominates the landscape to the extent that the temptation is always to read everything in terms of what it might mean for the title. That’s not unreasonable, but the English system’s domestic Cups deserve respect in their own right. Manchester City’s victory in the Carabao Cup final was a tactical triumph for Pep Guardiola and was rapturously celebrated by fans who, after last season’s chastening, have perhaps remembered that no silverware should be taken for granted.

And this was a spectacular weekend of FA Cup action, from another excellent City performance intensifying the doubts about Arne Slot at Liverpool and Port Vale running into reality to Leeds’s exhausting and incident-packed penalty shootout victory at West Ham . But the main event came on Saturday evening with Arsenal’s defeat to a Southampton side wearing a pale yellow and blue kit in tribute to their FA Cup final victory over Manchester United in those colors 50 years ago. Self-conscious nostalgia is all part of the FA Cup package – as is the emergence of unlikely heroes.