Thursday 16 March 2023

Today Is...The First Ever FA Cup Final

The FA Cup came into life at the offices of The Sportsman newspaper when in 1871 a member of the newly established Football Association decided that: 'it is desirable that a Challenge Cup should be established in connection with the Association for which all clubs belonging to the Association should be invited to compete'.
Thirteen games later and The Wanderers F.C. were whooping it up after beating Royal Engineers A.F.C. 1–0 at The Oval in Kennington, London to win the first ever FA Cup and over the next 152 years a certain North London Team called Arsenal have won it the most times, 14, and that is pretty much all you need to know but as the challenge is to write a 'proper' post everyday for the whole 365 days, i'd better find a way to pad this post out.
As the FA Cup is a knockout competition, quite a few teams have been knocked out when it gets to the latter stages so football fans try to work out which rival team they object to the least and hold their nose and lend their tentative backing to the least annoying teams or whoever our favourite celebrity is supporting.
As if being an Aston Villa fan isn't bad enough, Tom Hanks has come out and displayed his loyalty for Aston Villa while US Ex-President Barack Obama has revealed he has a secret passion for West Ham.
And they are not the only Americans to have leanings towards a particular UK football team with Halle Berry and Sylvester Stallone supporting Everton although after his appearance in Escape to Victory, Everton fans expect that he passed on some tips to their goalkeeper.
Justin Timberlake and Brad Pitt risk being instantly disliked on sight by coming out for Manchester United but Arsenal are apparently very proud to list Kevin Costner, Jackie Chan, Freddie Prinze Jr, Spike Lee, Will Ferrell, Michael Moore and Dido among their celebrity 'Gooners'.
Apparently Bin Laden also used to attend Arsenal games before he turned his mind to other matters and as he has proved with everything he has recorded since 1987, Phil Collins is not afraid to put his name to a lost cause and is a firm supporter of Tottenham Hotspur, dedicating his singles 'Against All Odds' to Eric Dier's England Call up and 'In The Air Tonight' to sum up Harry Kane's penalty prowess.

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