CONSPIRACY theorists who think the Twin Towers were taken down by CIA trained six foot shape shifting kamikaze lizards acting under cover of holgraphic projections designed to look like airliners have nothing on football fans. We can watch the mundane and mathematically predictable happen live on TV and immediately reject emperical evidence in favour of believing the sinister unseen hands of Brian Barwick and Rupert Murdoch are manipulating events.
Within seconds of the under-fire ever smiling England boss Steve McClaren and loveable fingers-in-many-pies merchant and one-time Teeside Houdini act Terry Venables jiggling their balls about in the full glare of the cameras the internet was buzzing with rumours of foul play.
It's obvious really. The FA and Sky got the draw they wanted. The big three were kept apart so we are bang on track for a bums-on-seats superstar showdown to open the new Wembley. How do you explain that other than Mossad designed remotedly activated miniture magnetic sensors that send signals to chips planted in Mac's teeth? Don't you watch 'Spooks'?
If there is a sinister Max Scorpio style plot to ensure a glamorous final - and this cutting edge cyber stirrer emphatically rejects the notion that three of the balls were kept in Soho Square's fridge overnight - then it runs counter to the interests of real fans across the country.
The punters are bored witless of endless small screen glamour clashes between the big three. Sure it makes business sense. They haven't spent a vastly over budget billion pounds on the much delayed stadium to open it with a Plymouth v Boro final, that's for sure.
But the magic of the cup envisaged by those Corinthian football pioneers was not a competition that suited advertisers, programme schedulers and corporate hospitality managers at a lavish new stadium with a pricing profile designed to exclude the great unwashed and privincial riff-raff.
No, the competition's magic lies in its ability to provide shocks, upsets and fairytales. What real fans across the nation wanted was the chance to redeem the soul of the game with a draw that would eliminate some of the big guns and open the way to a sensationally unbalanced and unglamorous final that featured some media unfriendly minnows (and if you are standing in the FA, BBC or Sky HQs then that definitely includes Boro.)
What makes a draw favourable to the all-powerful cartel of megaclubs even more galling is their constant undignified squealing about how the whole world is so unfair to them. Arsenal want to do away with replays because they are not good enough to win first time out after arrogantly resting their key players. Manchester United want extra-time in the first game because it is not fair that their massive squad should abide by the rules of the competition when they have far more lucrative competitions like the Champions League to compete in. Chelsea want, who knows, probably that Jose can pick the opposing team. And the referee.
What the big clubs object to about the FA Cup is the very thing that makes it special, that it is unpredictable. They can't plan around it. They fit in a shirt selling friendly in South Africa on a blank midweek lest they have a replay. There are unquntifiable matches thrown up at grounds that don't meet their prima donnas' demands for a personal mirror in the changies, on surfaces that are not maintained by a team of 50, that could result in replays, injuries or red cards that may impact on the more serious business of making money in serious competitions.
Fine. Then bugger off. If you don't like the rules of the competition that every one of the other 670 odd teams who paid the entry fee are prepared to abide by then don't enter. Free up some key Saturdays for warm weather training. Withdraw like Manchester United did when the January dates interfered with their plans to use the ill-fated World Club Cup to corner the global shirt sale market. Or just play a reserve team. But don't bloody whinge.
The quarter-final draw was a triumph for the FA. It could open the way to ticking a lot of boxes on that all-important Wembley business plan. But the FA are notoriously poor planners - Wembley is a case in point - and the game has a habit of kicking them in the teeth.
The worst result for them - and the best for the health, credibility and fairytale rating of the game as a whole - would see their cashcows humbled now. If Reading were to beat Manchester United it would be brilliant, if only to see Fergie explode in ungraceful recrimination. If Blackburn were to beat Arsenal it would be fantastic and prompt Arsene to demand Champions League teams should be given a bye to the semi. And if Spurs were to win at Chelsea too then that would prompt spontaneous street parties.
That could leave a genuinely interesting semi-final stages that featured maybe plucky Plymouth, Spurs (even though there is no 1 in the year), Blackburn and Boro. Providing our replay obsessive heroes beat West Brom and Reading of course. Such a combination of resulst may seem unlikely but then again, who would have believed that the entire game was controlled by a secret coalition of the Illuminati, the Freemasons and nazis flying saucers from Atlantis?
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