The Cup is a parallel tournament to the league. If the league ultimately wins the championship by defense, then the final victory of the cup is often based on the attack, coupled with the contingency of the cup, all of which makes the cup a very attractive part of the sport of football. Before the restructuring of UEFA, the European Cup winners' Cup, which was competed for in the Cup of each member state, was no less level and ornamental than the Champions Cup, and the competition scene was extremely open, attracting a large number of fans to watch and discuss!
In 1998, Chelsea won the European Cup Winners' Cup
And when it comes to cups, you can't help but talk about the FA Cup, the oldest football match in the world, first held in 1863. Winning the FA Cup is still the glory of all clubs in England. However, as we all know, in recent years, the Premier League has been extremely serious, resulting in the Premier League clubs are difficult to spare the FA Cup, low-level teams can often be upset to advance to the FA Cup competition (fa cup including two rounds of qualifiers, four rounds of qualifiers, eight rounds of the main round); and as long as you enter the qualifiers, each game has a minimum of 40,000 pounds (whether winning or losing) participation bonuses, if you can enter the main game, the participation prize money of each game is as high as 200,000 pounds. If you finally win the championship, in addition to the millions of pounds of prize money, you can also directly qualify for the Europa Cup group stage, to know that all 6 games of the Europa Group Stage are played, even if all lose, you can get at least 8 million euros of game share. It is no exaggeration to say that although the powerful Premier League clubs may not care about this money, it is too attractive for small and medium-sized clubs in England that may only have millions of operating expenses per year!
The FA Cup triumph is also worth celebrating with giants like Manchester City
Leaving Europe, in Japan, the fastest growing in Asian football, there is also a very old cup, that is, the Emperor's Cup. The tournament, founded in 1921, if traced back to its roots, only originated in 1919 when the FA gave a gift to the newly established Japanese Football Association: a replica of the FA Cup trophy, and it was this replica that triggered the Japanese Football Association's inspiration for the establishment of the National Football Cup, and it was finally realized. The entire Emperor's Cup lasted for 100 years, the brightest moment was the first year of the opening of the Japanese Professional League, in that year's final award ceremony, in order to promote the rapid development of Japanese football, the emperor personally presented the award to the champion team Iwata Joy, when the captain of the Iwata team Masashi Nakayama was interviewed afterwards, he called this scene the most glorious moment of his life!
The Emperor's Cup is an important tournament in Japanese football
The FA Cup and the Emperor's Cup, although thousands of miles apart, but to sum up the reasons for their success, there are nothing more than two points: one is that both cups are in a country with a good enough football atmosphere and a deep enough football culture, which is a necessary condition for the existence of professional football events; the other is that there are enough honors and interests After these two competitions, clubs and players have endless motivation to fight for this championship!
It's either honor or it's money
The cup of Chinese football and professional leagues in parallel is the FA Cup that we are familiar with. The tournament was first held in 1995, a year after the A-League, and that's a dozen years. In the last decade when the Chinese Super League has been the most expensive, the FA Cup has been used as a channel to directly participate in the AFC Champions League, because it can avoid giants like Evergrande An SIPG, and it is always crowded with clubs that are difficult to compete for the top three in the Chinese Super League but want to get on the AFC Champions League.
Shenhua can always win the FA Cup
However, with the cold winter of Chinese football that began last year, the FA Cup has instantly become an uncompromising chicken rib competition: first of all, the first consideration of clubs is the survival problem, and it is already Amitabha Buddha who can keep the league qualification, and the cup is naturally the icing on the cake to the point of dispensability. Secondly, the AFC Champions League qualification obtained after winning the FA Cup has also changed from a fragrant food that everyone is competing for to become a nest that is difficult to swallow because of the epidemic: the participating teams have to face the dilemma of multiple isolation when they go abroad to participate, and the original practice of taking into account the league and the AFC Champions League is now completely impossible. Taking this year's AFC Champions League as an example, in the end, the three Chinese Super League clubs chose to guarantee the league results, so they sent youth teams to compete abroad, unfortunately, such a choice finally won the worst result of the Chinese team in the history of the AFC Champions League!
The AFC Champions League has moved away from Chinese football
Therefore, this year's FA Cup, its tediousness has never been seen before, except for Shenhua, the attitude of all other participating teams is to go through the stage, and the reason why Shenhua is willing to fight is nothing more than because it was beaten into the relegation group in the previous first stage of the league, and it is impossible to account for fans and public opinion, so the FA Cup has become the only opportunity for the club to redeem itself this year!
I love this female fan
Although this year's FA Cup is so unbearable, but then again, I am still willing to praise the FA for being able to insist on hosting the tournament in this football winter, because the FA has done at least one thing right, that is, persistence! Only by persevering, our football culture will be refined, there is not so much hostility; only by persevering, the fun that football brings to us will be magnified and passed on... Or to put it: Chinese football has the hope of success!
I only hope that the Football Association can continue to insist on the right things! As for those wrong things, there is no need to stick to them!
The illustrations in this article come from the Internet, and the copyright belongs to the original author!