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It’s a new year, and that means for football fans in England it’s FA Cup third round time. This week’s listening report looks at this competition with some key numbers. This is our second ‘FA Cup in Numbers, and you can read Part I here. This listening report is a shortened version of the regular weekly podcast. You can read the transcript below with key vocabulary explained at the bottom of the post.
The FA Cup in Numbers – Part II
The third round of the FA cup is when the teams from the first and second tiers of the football league pyramid join the competition. Traditionally, this is the round where minnows meet the big teams, and fans hope for giant killings and upsets. Languagecaster takes a look at the competition through 5 numbers – each explaining a part of the competition’s story.
0
The FA Cup is a competition that has at its heart the fact that even amateur teams can join. There is the chance for small teams to do well. However, although we all talk about the romance of the cup, no team from outside the Premier League has won the FA cup since West Ham United, who beat Arsenal in 1980.
8
But before we get too gloomy about the chances of the minnows, how about Guernsey FC, who made it to the Second Qualifying Round of the FA Cup after winning twice before losing to Dover Athletic. They scored eight goals in their three games and became the first team from outside England, Wales, Ireland or ScotlandA to take part in the competition. Guernsey is of course part of the Channel Islands, which are British Crown Dependencies.
133
This year’s tournament [2014] will be the 133rd. The FA cup has been held most years since 1871, although World Wars One and Two interrupted this run.
737
This year, there have been 737 entrants. The first year the competition was held in the 1871-72 season only 17 teams entered.A The first games for this season’s FA Cup were held last year in August, and the first tie was between Darlington Railway Athletic from the 10th tier of the football pyramid against Newton Aycliffe from the ninth – the latter won convincingly 5-1 in front of 82 spectators.
1,800,000
The Cup has romance and glory, but not so much money. A£1.8 million is the prize money in pounds that will be given to the winner of the FA Cup. This compares with A£10.5 million for the Champions League. Of course the domestic cup will be less valuable than an international competition, but if you add the A£60 million that a Champions League winning team can expect to receive from TV deals, then the difference becomes very clear indeed. Also, where you finish in the Premier league can mean wining or losing millions of pounds. Each place higher in the league last season was worth roughly A£750,000. No wonder many managers in the Premier League focus most of their attention on staying in the division or trying to get into the Champions League rather than attempting to win glory in the FA Cup.
Football vocabulary and phrases used in this week’s listening report
- tier: Level; division; rank
- giant killing: When a small, less famous club defeats a club from a higher division
- the romance of the cup: A cliche that many pundits use to talk about why the FA Cup is special
- tie: Match; fixture; Cup game
- spectator: Fan; supporter; member of the audience
Don’t forget that there’s a transcript to this podcast and lots of vocabulary support which you can access by coming along to our site. We also have a football language forum where fans of the beautiful game can ask and answer questions on all kinds of football language – come along and join in the football language discussion. OK, enjoy all the football this week and we’ll see you again soon. Bye bye.
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