Who's Extra-special? YOU'RE Extra-special

On May 15 of next year, some 90,000 people will crowd into England's national stadium, Wembley, to watch the final of the Football Association Cup, or F.A. Cup as it's known by, well, everyone. Millions more around Britain will watch on TV, and quite a few more will watch around the world.

And with any luck, the 2018 World Cup final, too.

It is a grand occasion, one of the highlights of the English football calendar, and that is reflected in its prominence, scheduled for the week after the regular season ends and the only game in town, so to speak. (The tournament itself is conducted alongside the normal league campaign, rather than as a postseason playoff as is typical in American sports.)

The final itself has been contested, in recent years, mostly by members of 'The Big 4,' the four large clubs that have dominated the past decade and a half of English football. (Even anti-fans of soccer have heard of these: Manchester United, Chelsea, Arsenal and Liverpool.) A glorious exception came two years ago, when the local Premier League side, Portsmouth, were the winners.

Fifteen months later, the club is nearly bankrupt!

For the average fan, the F.A. Cup begins in January, when the teams from the top two divisions enter the draw for the third round. Most will know that lower-level teams come in for the first round, a couple of months earlier.

But before the 'first round,' there are six other rounds, starting with something called the Extra-Preliminary Round, followed by the Preliminary Round and four Qualifying Rounds. For a club to advance from the Extra-Preliminary Round to the First Round thus requires six victories -- as many as would be required for Manchester United to win the Cup.

That's because the F.A. Cup is open not only to the country's biggest clubs, but also to some of its smallest. (Briefly, the Premier League is at the top of the 'pyramid,' which goes about 20 levels deep. There is theoretically promotion and relegation to and from each of these levels, though stadium restrictions put a limit on that. The F.A. Cup is open to teams in the top 10 levels of the pyramid, though many at the 10th level aren't eligible because their grounds don't have things like floodlights.)

And part of the 'magic' of the F.A. Cup comes from the fact that, theoretically, any team can reach the Final, even if, in practice, that never happens. And more magic is found in the way games are set up -- there is no seeding at all, and any team can play any other team. Manchester United, therefore, could play Chelsea in the third round, or it could be drawn against some lucky lower-level team that's won through a half-dozen rounds already. And even more remarkably, Manchester United could be forced to play at that team's ground! (Although a club of Man U's size would generally require the tie to be moved to a larger ground.)

It's all highly unlikely, of course, but it's not impossible. Just two years ago, a team called Chasetown entered the Cup in the Preliminary Round and made it all the way to the Third Round, where they were drawn against Cardiff City, a side from the second-highest division in the country. And Cardiff were forced to travel to Chasetown, where the average attendance is something like 200. More than 2,000 packed into a tiny ground to watch Chasetown improbably take the lead before bowing out to a respectable 3-1 defeat.


Four months later, Cardiff lost the F.A. Cup final to Portsmouth.

So less than three months removed from the last final, contested on the day I touched down in England, the F.A. Cup began again last weekend. And because I am hopelessly romantic about things like this, I had to attend. Saturday saw me at a familiar venue, Fareham Town's delightfully quirky little ground, where the home side were playing local rivals Moneyfields. (The draw is heavily regionalised in the early rounds, so local derbies, as they're called, are common.)

Attendance at Fareham's first two home games was 102 and 103, and the excitement of the F.A. Cup swells the crowd for this game to, um, around 160. With 203 Extra-Preliminary Round games, that likely means that the attendance at ALL of them was less than half the total that will watch the final in nine months.

But although Fareham Town's players are more likely to walk on the moon than appear in the F.A. Cup final, there was no lack of energy about the game. A decent cup run can mean a financial boost for a club, if nothing else. And with Fareham's players all on, at least according to the man standing next to me, £10 a week (plus undisclosed bonuses for winning), even the £750 prize money for winning in the Extra-Preliminary Round will go quite a long way.

But there's to be no prize money for Fareham this year, even after they take the lead early in the second half. A pair of goals from free kicks by Owen Elias, the second in the final minute of the match, knocks them out, the fact that Elias is an ex-Fareham player only making the sting worse.

Drawn games in the F.A. Cup are replayed at the ground of the visiting team. Once upon a time, they were replayed as many times as necessary, but the constraints of the modern game mean replays are now decided by extra-time and penalty shootouts, if necessary. The semifinals and finals now have no replays at all.

But the Extra-Preliminary Round does, and that offers me another chance to dip my toe in the pool. A Google search helps me decide that I'm going to Pagham, a small town about 40 minutes to the east, where the local team is replaying a match against Banstead Athletic. (Pagham itself is a small seaside town and is apparently becoming popular with the celeb set, including Emma Bunton, the once and future Baby Spice. I don't recall seeing her at the game ...)

The pre-match announcements remind us that extra-time and penalties are on offer, and it doesn't take long to reach the conclusion that that's where we may be going. There are few real chances, as both teams defend rather desperately, and the match seems destined either for a shootout or a late, late winner.

That winner, much to the home fans' chagrin, nearly comes at the end of regulation, when Banstead are awarded a penalty kick. Most of the fans appear already to have given up hope of victory -- at least until the kick is blazed at least a foot over the crossbar, still rising as it hits the net behind the goal.

Extra-time, then, with the game still 0-0. But it doesn't take long for Banstead to redeem themselves, with a scramble near the goal ending when one of their substitutes bundles the ball over from about two yards out.

Not surprisingly, this is just the thing Pagham need to finally inject some urgency into their game, and they come close to scoring a couple of times. But their lot appears up when one of their substitutes flattens a Banstead player (during a Pagham attack, no less) and is ejected, leaving Pagham short-handed for the final 10-12 minutes of the game.

But they overcome the odds, and a scramble of their own ends with the ball crashing into the hand of a Banstead player in the penalty box, giving Pagham a penalty kick of its own. There is no repeat of the earlier calamity, and we go to the dreaded penalty shootout.

If, however, the keepers are feeling any nerves, they don't show it, seeking each other out to wish each other luck. And after the first Pagham penalty beats Banstead keeper Dave Tidy, he remarks to the fans behind the goal that nothing much can be expected of him, as he is just 'a fat, slow old ...' (He never finishes that sentence, leaving it to our imagination.)

A shock, then, when he saves the next one, though it is, in his words, 'the worst penalty ever.'

He saves Pagham's third as well, but his team's struggles continue, with their second crashing off the crossbar and the third saved by Pagham's Wes Hallett, whose pink-torsoed, black-sleeved goalkeeper's shirt is about two sizes too small, leaving him looking as though he turned up late at the Hello Kitty Football Shop's summer clearance sale.

In the end, Pagham can thank the goal frame for their spot in the Preliminary Round, Banstead's fifth penalty crashing off the post before Pagham's Andy Fox wins it with his side's final kick.

£750 in the bank, then, and a home game in the Preliminary Round against Walton Casuals. Only 13 wins from Wembley...