FA Cup Final Non-Preview

This post may be another semi-rant. apologies for that.

If you cruise around the interwebs today and tomorrow you will find a ton of sports writers creaming themselves over this years 'epic' FA Cup final between Chelsea and Manchester United. I don't begrudge them of their excitement for what I find to be an insanely boring sport, everyone has their own fandom (shit, I like love figure skating for goodnessake) and that's fine by me.

What I do take issue with however, is the fact that not one sports writer in the papers, the tubes or the gogglebox will talk about the underlying problems with top class soccer.

In the last eleven years only four teams have won the FA Cup. To put that into perspective, last year there were 687 teams who entered the competition and it was closer to 700 this year. Do you even need me to tell you who the four winning teams are? Chelsea, ManUtd, Arsenal and Liverpool. Those are the only teams to have won the thing for the last eleven years despite nearly 700 teams taking part. And the reason for that is Money. Money talks in soccer these days and the Football Associations of the world have been too corrupted by it to put a stop to it.

The sports writers of the world can go on and on about the history of the Cup, the romance of it all and the shock defeats of the past, but the truth is a much more bland and sour-tasting story. The last two FA Cup finals have been decided by penalties and this year will be the twelfth year running that one of the four richest teams in Britain 'wins' the FA Cup. Is that what you want you're sport to be soccer fans? If so, I pity you.