Poor old Ruben Amorim. The sight of the hapless Manchester United manager cowering in the Blundell Park dugout seemingly praying that his billion-pound team could somehow scrape through on penalties against fourth-tier Grimsby in the Carabao Cup last night is now indelible. Perhaps only the tear drenched face of Rachel Reeves cowering in her own dugout in the House of Commons will compete this year for visual power. As you are probably aware, Amorim’s invocations were to no avail: after a marathon penalty shoot-out United lost. Though it wasn’t just Grimsby but football as a whole that was the winner.
Last night’s game was a glorious evocation of all that was once great and maybe still is about British cup football
For last night’s game was a glorious evocation of all that was once great and maybe still is about British cup football. We had an ancient old stadium, housing a raucous and rude home crowd, flourishing their fishy inflatables (piscine symbolism and references abounded) in a David vs Goliath encounter played at a furious intensity in magnificently unseasonal British weather. There was even a pitch invasion at the end after the slingshot/penalty shoot-out finale. If only the trespassers had been wearing parkers and flared jeans and sporting long lank unwashed hair the image of a 70s-era giant-slaying would have been complete.
OK, let’s not get carried away, it was the distinctly un-storied Carabao (I don’t know what this is and refuse to find out) Cup rather than the true jewel of English football the FA Cup at stake, and United have been a hot mess for ages, so if any team was ripe for this kind of ‘battering’ then they were. But this was no fake, the gulf, on paper, between the sides was vast. And there was no suspicion of a certain erm… lack of commitment (see Plymouth vs Liverpool last February) that sometimes characterises these upsets. Manchester United are so starved of success that they are obliged to take this lesser tournament seriously. The ‘stars’ were out and appeared at full throttle, it’s just that United at full throttle is often half cocked these days.
Apart from being cracking (free-to-air!) entertainment, last night’s game should serve as a salutary lesson. The football authorities are forever mucking about with our tournaments, cramming the calendar and trying to gouge out every last penny in a way that ultimately wounds the game. Every year formats and financials are tweaked so that it gets harder and harder for clubs from the lower ‘tiers’ to compete with the giants. The dominance of the Premier League and Champion’s League in the thinking of the big clubs has risked rendering domestic cup football an afterthought, or tiresome obligation to be treated as a chance to ‘experiment’ or only half-heartedly engage in.
Which kills the game, making it bland and predictable, and ultimately perhaps, less profitable. There is evidence that the Premier League has peaked in terms of revenue-generation and is starting to decline. There may be many reasons for this: the uniformity of playing styles, high turnover of players with not even the remotest connection to the clubs they join, the absence – to the point of it seemingly quaintly anachronistic – of such concepts as loyalty (Isak) are all relevant. But lack of jeopardy, the tiny pool of ‘winners’ is surely foremost, which has led to a situation where last night’s drama feels not just like a welcome, entirely pleasurable reminder of what we all found so thrilling about football in the first place but should serve as a wake-up call to the money men as to what makes the game profitable in the long run.
The true lifeblood of the game is stories, which require teams like Grimsby to now and again beat teams like Manchester United. That is what keep fans engaged and committed, and coming back for more. It also maintains football’s wider, incidental but important, social functions as a benign arena for displays of local pride, provider of cathartic experiences and a channeler of frustrations. Where once predominantly men went to football on a Saturday partly to work off the aggression of a week spent in manual toil, now everyone goes along. But we still need the heroes, and especially the villains to serve as proxies for our broader frustrations. And Man Utd make great villains.
It also keeps our spirits up and inspires good humour, albeit of the schadenfreude variety. Manchester United fans should brace themselves. The jokes will keep coming and they will sting a bit, for a while. But it’s all part of the fun. Here’s one to finish: Manchester United fan goes into a travel agent and asks for a holiday recommendation. ‘You can’t beat Grimsby at this time of year’ comes the reply.
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