FA Cup
AUBAMEYANG’S BRACE FIRES GUNNERS INTO FA CUP FINAL
Manchester City earned a momentous reprieve in one competition last week but in the FA Cup semi-final at Wembley with only 90,000 empty seats as judge and jury, they could not escape their sentence.
The Court of Arbitration for Sport might have allowed them back into the Champions League for the next two seasons but Arsenal showed them no mercy here.
Their shock 2-0 victory was a triumph of uncharacteristic resilience in defence, led by a brilliant display from David Luiz, and of clinical finishing from Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, who scored goals in each half to dump City out of the competition they won last year by trouncing Watford in the final.
Arsenal will play either Manchester United or Chelsea in the final on August 1.
It was also the most significant victory yet for Arsenal boss Mikel Arteta, who has only been in charge at the Emirates since December but is already effecting improvements in attitude and style. This one was a victory for the apprentice over his old master as Arteta plotted a way past his former boss, Pep Guardiola.
Arsenal are languishing in ninth place in the Premier League but suddenly their season has new life. They beat champions Liverpool on Wednesday and this result stunned English football. City were widely expected to win this match and claim the FA Cup as their consolation prize for losing the Premier League but they spurned chance after chance and never looked at their best.
City will now be able to pour everything into their pursuit of the Champions League but if they show the same vulnerability at the back in the second leg of their second round match against Real Madrid as they did here against Arsenal, the Spanish champions will fancy their chances of overhauling their first leg deficit. Overwhelmed by Liverpool in the league, this defeat was a rude shock for Guardiola and his team.
The empty stadium seemed particularly stark here. FA Cup semi-final day is usually a riot of colour and a feast of fan expectation and nerves. It is a day out as much as a football match, a day to dream of the final and sing about putting the champagne on ice. Not this time. Not now. Here, there were groundsmen forking the pitch and music echoing around an empty Wembley. It is a necessary measure for now but that does not stop it feeling all wrong.
Even with nine substitutes, Arteta could not find any room for either Mesut Ozil or Matteo Guendouzi in his squad. It is starting to feel increasingly likely that neither will be at the club next season, although finding someone to pay Ozil’s wages has always been put forward as the biggest stumbling block to the Germany midfielder moving on.
Arteta stayed true to the same system he had used in Wednesday’s victory over champions Liverpool at the Emirates and lined up with Kieran Tierney on the left side of a back three. It is the system that seems to get the best out of David Luiz – or do most to protect him, depending on your point of view – and after some heart-stopping early exchanges, Arsenal used it well.
Arsenal nearly handed City an early lead in the ninth minute with the kind of comedy defending that has become one of their hallmarks. Luiz played the ball square across his own box to Shkodran Mustafi who tried to step inside Raheem Sterling as Sterling closed him down. It had trouble written all over it.
Sterling dispossessed Mustafi easily six yards out and it appeared Arsenal were about to be severely embarrassed. Sterling tried to play the ball inside to give Gabriel Jesus a tap-in but Mustafi’s blushes were spared when the pass was intercepted and the danger cleared. It felt already as if Arsenal were in for a long evening.
Arteta’s side were starved of possession and defending with a degree of desperation. Kevin de Bruyne floated a ball to the back post, Riyad Mahrez nodded it back across goal and it was hacked clear before City could apply the finishing touch. By then, Kieran Tierney had already had to make a separate last-ditch clearance.
But after quarter of an hour, Arsenal should have taken the lead. Luiz has been roundly criticised since the restart but he received a ringing endorsement from Pep Guardiola last week when the City manager said he laughed when he heard pundits dismissing his talent. On cue, Luiz intercepted a long ball forward, chested it down, and played a slide-rule pass through to Aubameyang. Aubameyang was clean through but he hit his shot straight at Ederson, who saved it easily.
City did not learn from their escape though. A minute later, at the end of an 18-pass move that had started in Arsenal’s area and included ten players, Nicolas Pepe curled a ball across the City box to the back post. Aubameyang drifted away from Kyle Walker and met the ball as it dropped, clipping a right-footed half-volley past Ederson from a difficult angle. The keeper had no chance and the ball went in off the far post.
It was a brilliant finish to a superb move. It is easy to mock Arsenal’s talent for self-destruction but the goal was crafted from the courage to stick to their plan of playing the ball out from the back and beating the City press. Even though they had nearly come unstuck earlier, this time they had the skill and the confidence to work it perfectly.
Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola admitted he was surprised that Norwegian striker Erling Haaland declined to take a penalty for his side in Saturday’s FA Cup final against Crystal Palace with the kick subsequently being missed by Omar Marmoush.
Trailing 1-0 to Eberechi Eze’s goal, City were awarded a penalty in the first half when Palace defender Tyrick Mitchell tripped Bernardo Silva who had burst into the area.
Haaland, who had failed to score in his first five Wembley appearances for City, looked poised to break that duck, but handed the ball to Marmoush whose first-ever penalty for City was superbly saved by Dean Henderson.
“I thought he would want to take it but they didn’t speak,” said Guardiola. “That moment for the penalty, it’s the feeling and how they feel. They decided Omar was ready to take it.
“Omar took a lot of time when the ball was stopped, so it put more pressure on him, and Henderson made a good save.”
Former Manchester United striker Wayne Rooney, working as a TV pundit for the BBC, said he felt the occasion might have got to Haaland.
“He’s a world-class forward, but when we are talking about Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo, there is no way they are giving that ball away,” Rooney said.
“That is what separates them two players from Erling Haaland or Kylian Mbappe and these players. They are selfish and they want to score every game.
“When (Haaland) misses chances I think you can see it gets to him and it does affect him. Maybe the thought of taking a penalty at Wembley might have been too much for him. You never know, he is a human being.”
Haaland has scored 30 goals for City this season in all competitions but has missed three of his seven penalties.
-Reuters
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Crystal Palace face Manchester City at Wembley on Saturday hoping to lift the FA Cup for the first time and it is guaranteed that high on the pre-match agenda will be the club’s extraordinary and eventually heartbreaking 1990 campaign.
The semi-finals and final(s) that year were arguably the most dramatic in the competition’s long and storied history and remain the emotional high and low point of every Palace fan who watched them.
Palace were struggling in the top flight after promotion and had been humiliated 9-0 by Liverpool early in the season.
In the Cup they were hardly pulling up trees either, beating lower league Portsmouth, Huddersfield Town, Rochdale and Cambridge United to reach the semi-finals for the first time since they lost to Southampton as a third division team in 1976.
Facing runaway champions-elect and FA Cup holders Liverpool again in the semis look an insurmountable barrier and an Ian Rush goal had the Reds ahead at halftime at Villa Park.
Things then went crazy as Mark Bright and Gary O’Reilly gave Palace a shock lead. Two goals in two minutes put Liverpool back in front, only for Andy Gray to stun the odds-on favourites in the 88th minute to force extra time.
Amazingly, it was Palace who snatched victory in the 109th minute via Alan Pardew, who would later manage the club.
It was the first year that both semi-finals were live on TV and barely had the excitement abated when similarly unfancied Oldham ran out to face Manchester United at Maine Road.
The second division team had not beaten top-flight opposition in 66 years but accounted for four that season in a double cup run that caught the nation’s imagination.
Playing vibrant, attacking football under Joe Royle, Oldham twice came from behind to draw 3-3 after extra time – meaning a remarkable 13 goals had been scored on a day of unimaginable drama. United ended Oldham’s dream when they snatched a 2-1 victory six minutes from the end of extra time in the replay.
ALL-ENGLISH TEAM
The Palace side who lined up at Wembley were the last all-English team to play in the final while United’s were the last all-UK lineup to win it.
United manager Alex Ferguson was under huge pressure to deliver a trophy four years after arriving at Old Trafford, but Palace struck first through O’Reilly.
Bryan Robson and Mark Hughes turned it round and United seemed on course for victory, only for Ian Wright to come off the bench for the most wonderful 20 minutes of his life.
The former non-league striker had been sidelined for much of the season with a twice-broken leg, but exploded into action to equalise with virtually his first touch and then put the Londoners ahead early in extra time.
“It’s still the greatest moment I’ve had in my career – easily – simply because of everything that it had entailed up to that point,” Wright told the Palace website on Friday.
“My emergence at Palace, and to reach the biggest stage in English football, and all of a sudden I’m on the Wembley pitch.
“And then what happened after that was the stuff of fairytales. It really, really was.”
However, as the Palace fans sang in dreamland, Hughes broke their hearts with a late equaliser.
The replay five days later could not live up to everything that had gone before and though Palace battled gamely, United won it 1-0 with a goal by Lee Martin.
It was a victory that launched Ferguson and United on their dizzying journey of success – that included another extra-time FA Cup final win over Palace in 2016 after the Scot had retired – but one that left a gaping hole in the hearts of the losers.
“I would have loved to have won that FA Cup, and we were only seven minutes away,” said Wright, who went on to win multiple trophies, including two FA Cups with Arsenal. “Seven minutes. Honestly, I still can’t take it.”
-Reuters
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The first weekend of semi-automated offside decisions in English soccer descended into confusion on Saturday as Bournemouth had a goal ruled out after a record eight-minute VAR check.
Bournemouth, who eventually beat Premier League rivals Wolverhampton Wanderers on penalties in the FA Cup fifth round after a 1-1 draw, thought they had doubled their lead when defender Milos Kerkez scored in the 35th-minute goal.
However, new technology could not be used because the six-yard area was too crowded and VAR officials had to revert to manually drawing lines before disallowing the goal.
Fellow defender Dean Huijsen was adjudged to have been in an offside position as Kerkez’s effort brushed his shoulder before going in to the net.
The VAR check was further complicated as VAR officials Timothy Wood and Darren England also had to also examine the possibility of hand balls prior to the tight offside call.
Both sets of fans voiced their disapproval at the interminable wait, chanting “it’s not football any more” and “this is embarrassing”.
Referee Sam Barrott, who eventually announced the decision to the crowd via a microphone, had to explain to the respective managers and players what was happening during the delay.
-Reuters
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