Oil, Oligarchs and the FA Cup Final

Football has changed a lot since the glory days of the FA Cup. Some things are better left in the past - muddy Wembley pitches, heavy footballs and serious injuries every other final. Other things are still sorely missed - breakfast time coverage on Cup Final morning, joyous pitch invasions, and the genuine belief that almost anyone could win it.

That unpredictability fading away has perhaps done more than anything else to fuel claims that the magic of the Cup is disappearing. In the last thirty years, just five clubs have won all but four FA Cup finals: Manchester United, Liverpool, Arsenal, and this season’s finalists, Manchester City and Chelsea.

This episode stands in stark contrast to last year’s celebration of the competition’s glorious history. Instead, this is something of a rant - and at times, a genuinely concerned one - about modern football and the financial imbalance that increasingly defines it. No clubs embody that shift more clearly than City and Chelsea, both transformed from outsiders into serial winners by vast wealth in remarkably short periods of time.

Now, with accusations of financial impropriety hanging over one club and proven rule breaches with relatively limited punishment attached to the other, both stand at the forefront of a modern football economy dominated by a handful of superclubs. Clubs whose spending power - despite regulations supposedly designed to create financial fairness - continues to dwarf that of almost everyone else, while those same rules seem to be making it even harder for challengers to catch up.

Because ultimately, how can the FA Cup ever truly regain its old magic when the highest reaches of the game feel less accessible than ever before?