Cup in many countries are competitions where clubs play because they have to. But the FA Cup, with a tradition of more than 130 years, is a competition everyone wants to win. The biggest attraction of this competition is that a team from the second or third tier can beat a Premier League team if they don’t take it seriously.
Here, a worker from the third shift who happens to be a player of a lower-class club can play against his idol, beat his idol, and get praise from his idol. This is why the FA Cup is a competition of the small against the big, for ordinary people, for the victory of football over money. Football, in its original form, is the FA Cup.
I mentioned that the FA Cup is the oldest football competition in the world. It was held for the first time back in 1871 (the cup started in November), and 15 teams participated in this cup. The conquerors were the Wanderers (by the way, a club founded in 1859 but under the name Forest Football Club), who, in the final held on March 16, 1872, managed to defeat the Royal Engineers with a score of 1:0.
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In the first 17 years of the FA Cup, the final was played 16 times at the Kennington Oval in London. This stadium hosted as many as 22 FA Cup final matches. Apart from Kennington Oval, the FA Cup final was played in nine other stadiums (including the old and new Wembley), the most, of course, in London, and only the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff managed to enter the history books by hosting the final of this competition as the only non-English stadium.
It is worth highlighting certain things that are one of the reasons why we love this competition and why it is such a respected competition not only in England but in the whole of Europe.
The BBC broadcasted the first final of this competition exactly 96 years ago, but the first live broadcast of the matches began in 1938, that is, 11 years later.
Manchester United is the only team that did not defend the trophy (it happened in the 1999/2000 season) because then they also played in the World Club Championship, and they did not want (at least that’s how they went public) to send a reserve team to play FA Cup matches.
Arsenal and Manchester United are the record holders for the number of titles, having won this competition 12 times each. Newcastle, Arsenal, Liverpool, and Manchester United have each lost seven FA Cup finals
Manchester United are the only team to win the trophy after beating a Premier League team in every round (this happened in 1948).
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Wanderers, Bury, Blackburn Olympic, Coventry City, Ipswich Town, Wimbledon, and Old Carthusians are the only teams unbeaten in the FA Cup finals. Cardiff City is the only non-English team to win the FA Cup.
It was in 1927 Wigan is the only team that won the FA Cup but was relegated from the Premier League in the same season (in 2013).
The first trophy awarded to FA Cup winners was stolen in 1895 and has never been found.
Henry Cusham is the top scorer in the history of the FA Cup. He scored as many as 49 goals
Roberto Di Matteo is the scorer of the fastest goal in the FA Cup finals, while Didier Drogba is the only one to have scored in as many as four final matches.
Ian Rush, on the other hand, holds the record for most goals in FA Cup finals. He scored 5 goals in 3 final matches for Liverpool.
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He signed a contract with Liverpool in 1980 and debuted on December 13, 1980. In the red shirt, he played 660 games and scored 346 goals, a club record. It took him 9 games to score his first senior goal.
In the 1981-82 season, when he proved himself for the first team, Liverpool, he scored 30 goals in 49 games. The 1983-84 season was arguably his best, as he scored 47 goals and became the first British player to win the European Golden Boot. In 1986, his move to Juventus was announced, prompting Liverpool fans to launch a “Rush Must Stay” campaign to keep their hero at Anfield.
Rush set many records that have not yet been broken. Among them is the record for most goals scored in FA Cup Finals. Rush scored 5 goals, all when he played for Liverpool.
In the 1986 FA Cup final, which was special as both teams from Liverpool were participants, Rush scored 2 goals.
In 1989 the final match was again the Merseyside derby between Liverpool and Everton. And again, Rush scored 2 goals in the extra time and led the “Reds” to another FA Cup trophy.
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In 1992 Liverpool reached the final of the FA Cup once again, but this time, their opponent was different. This time it was Sunderland. But some other things remained the same, for example, Ian Rush scoring goals in the FA Cup final. He scored 2nd goal of the match, leading the team to another trophy and setting the record, which remains unattainable even today, scoring 5 goals in the FA Cup finals.
