but you can broadcast it.
OK so the F.A. Cup final wasn’t exactly exclusive on ITV but who, apart from those paper columnists who had to write a few hundred words on ESPN’s all day coverage, didn’t watch it on terrestrial telly?
And here it is the Wednesday after the final and it was such a memorable game I’m finally here posting something about it.
You can forget the Premier League sticking games on earlier in the day, you can forget ManUre not being involved a few years back when they had to head to Brazil for the England World Cup bid, you can forget there isn’t the same giant killing.
Forget everything, finals like that will kill the competition off quicker than anything.
And the reason the Cup has lost that sparkle is because it’s live and exclusively free on ITV and we all know that things turn to crap when they go to that channel. Hell even Eric & Ernie were a shadow of their former selves when they made the switch in ’78.
The only good thing about the day was Adrian Chiles bumbling to apologies for Balotelli describing his season as shit
it was also the 30th anniversary of one of the great Cup finals, the 1981 replay between Spurs and Citeh, and therefore that goal from Ricardo Julio Villa, the greatest F.A. Cup final goal.
While of course today is 20 years since the last triumph thanks to Des Walker’s 94th minute intervention. And those tackles by Gazza, what would have happened if he’d have kept his head that day? But that was never really going to happen was it.