CAN you imagine turning up to a Taylor Swift gig and finding rows and rows of empty seats? Exactly, it wouldn’t happen.
But last weekend, for a showpiece occasion at Wembley Stadium, there were banks of seating with no one in them.
2
It was very far from a sell-out and the FA needs to urgently rethink their policy on FA Cup semi-finals.
Push finally came to shove as the simple economics of attending matches in the capital hit home last Sunday as Manchester City against Nottingham Forest, two big clubs based many miles from Wembley, clashed for a place in the final.
What greeted the millions of armchair viewers across the world, keen to tune in to the oldest football competition of them all? Thousands of unused plastic red seats.
First of all, it’s not a good look. TV companies will not be remotely happy with this.
Trying to sell a tournament when there are empty seats galore is difficult if not impossible and it damages the image of the competition.
A lot is said about the ‘magic’ of the FA Cup, but the TV coverage from Sunday will prompt many to ask why fans are not turning up.
This is not a dig at City at all. They are one of the best-supported clubs but could only shift 27,000 of their 36,230 allocation.
This was their 29th Wembley trip since the stadium was refurbished in 2007 so you can understand why a touch of London fatigue has kicked in.
BEST FREE BETS AND BETTING SIGN UP OFFERS
Ticket prices cost between £30 and £150 and then you have the 400-mile round trip.
Throw in food and drink, plus the Russian roulette of catching a train and you can see why thousands of die-hard fans said enough is enough.
Asking two clubs to travel so far from their fanbase is not only expensive, it’s also illogical.
Why not use much closer, high-quality venues such as Villa Park or Old Trafford.
Wembley should be reserved for the final. You might think that is traditionalist but some traditions are worth preserving.
It always had a real aura about it and getting there was a kind of footballing El Dorado.
By putting semi-finals there, the FA has diluted their own competition, with the result there were over 17,000 empty seats on Sunday.
It’s not as if this was a rare occurrence as the 2023 FA Cup semi-final between City and Sheffield United attracted fewer than 70,000 at Wembley’s 90,000- capacity stadium.
In 2019, just over 71,000 attended the semi-final between Brighton and City.
I think some common sense as well as common decency is needed.
If two clubs from the capital meet each other in an FA Cup semi-final, I can see the logic in hosting it at Wembley.
2
But dragging Northerners hundreds of miles to London, with the enormous costs involved, seems complete lunacy.
Football needs to take care of its traditions and none more so than the FA Cup which, since it began in 1871, has seen 44 different clubs lift the famous trophy.
It has been won by Blackpool and Burnley, Wimbledon and Wigan and the FA Cup needs to be cherished and respected.
Perhaps the most famous FA Cup giant-killing goal of them all was Ronnie Radford’s screamer to help non-league Hereford knock out Newcastle in the 1970s.
Ronnie’s reaction has gone down in folklore as he celebrated hands aloft, tummy out, wide-mouthed in disbelief.
The reaction of the fans showed what it meant to the good folk of Hereford. Wouldn’t have been the same with rows of empty seats, would it?