YOU MIGHT HAVE MISSED . . .
The slow death of the FA Cup sometimes feels like an assisted suicide. Why does the FA permit the draw to take place at television’s convenience on a Sunday afternoon before all of a round’s ties have taken place?
Yesterday’s semi-final draw happened at 4.07pm, soon after Stoke City versus West Ham United and shortly before Manchester City hosted Reading. So a crucial aspect of the tournament was dispatched to the post-match purgatory zone, squeezed in somewhere between the punditry, the interviews and the advertisement breaks that follow every game.
Remember the sense of expectation created when daytime programming would be interrupted for a Monday lunchtime broadcast from FA headquarters? The present situation is ethically dubious, with teams that are heading onto the pitch able to predict which opponents are likely to lie in wait. Yesterday, for a couple of hours, a juicy potential tie overshadowed the quarter-final itself.
We may live in a culture of instant gratification, but it would be better for the competition if television and the FA could get the present out of the way before they arrange the future.
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• Team bonding, Aston Villa style: “On Wednesday we trained in the morning, then we spent the afternoon paintballing together before we went to the hotel and just had a meal, watched the football. It was more relaxed than when we go to a hotel before a game. Everyone just had a chat and a laugh and we played a few games of cards. I think it was a good idea from the management because everyone got something out of it.” — Marc Albrighton, Sunday Mercury, March 13.
“Gérard Houllier will lay down the law to his Aston Villa players about standards of behaviour after a squad bonding session ended in a restaurant bust-up. Several of the relegation- threatened club’s players had to be pulled apart after a heated late night argument at an exclusive Spa resort in midweek.” — Sunday Mirror, March 13.
LOOK OUT FOR . . .
After it emerged last week that Mario Balotelli is allergic to certain types of grass, Sir Alex Ferguson, the Manchester United manager, reveals another odd condition: an allergy to journalists.
“It’s a strange thing,” Ferguson tells MUTV. “It flares up after especially controversial defeats when I read the next day’s papers. Maybe it’s the ink they use. The symptoms are that I turn bright red and find it impossible to talk in public, and have this uncontrollable, irrational feeling of anger and injustice. It’s incurable, I’m afraid.”