Why the FA Cup final no one wanted says so much about the modern game

An another era, Calum McFarlane’s appearance at Wembley would be viewed as a vintage piece of FA Cup lore. Here he is on English football’s national day, with the chance to be the first English manager to actually win the competition since Harry Redknapp in 2008, and in just sixth game as a coach. Donning the suit for the final was an image that so many managers long dreamed of.

Brian Clough famously only got to do it two years from retirement, and never won the FA Cup. A novice like McFarlane now stands 90 minutes from glory, with the challenge of having to out-coach a great like Pep Guardiola only adding to the story. The luck of a cup, you might say, but there’s more to it than that.

The FA Cup has not staged a final without Man City or Chelsea since 2016 and it’s hard to not to feel it has played into an apathy about this final (Getty) Again, in previous decades, it would be one of those great FA Cup curios, like Sunderland’s Malcolm Crosby in 1992, or how West Brom’s 1968 victory was the only major success of Alan Ashman’s career. Except, people don’t really look on FA Cup lore in that way any more, and McFarlane’s temporary elevation certainly isn’t really a quirk comparable to those or any in this great competition’s history. It is instead very much a product of the distortions of the modern game, of which Chelsea ’s ownership are one of the more extreme examples.

The questionable financial experiment has already resulted in one strange outcome, where the relationship with Kinetic has seen a coach like McFarlane elevated. As regards what next, though, there’s a fair question over whether many will even care outside Chelsea and Manchester City . This already felt like an FA Cup final that was struggling for a place in the news cycle.