Hello, my name's Jack Pitbrook and welcome to Libero. We wanted to start by thanking you for listening to Libero and to let you know that there is a way that you can help us if that's the sort of thing that you might like to do. Obviously, we started doing this podcast because we sensed a real gap in the market. Finally, a new podcast about football. But we also started doing it because we do enjoy talking to each other about it. We enjoy talking about the work that we do, and we want an excuse to spend more time doing so. We've enjoyed doing it, and it's certainly been really encouraging that so many of you out there seem to enjoy listening to it as well. And we're very, very grateful in touch by all the nice emails that we get from you. But because we are independent, we do need a bit of help. So if you can tell your friends or mention us on social media, that would be fantastic. Give us a good rating or especially a nice review on Apple Podcasts would be even better. You can comment on Spotify as well. I know there's so many other football podcasts out there, which all cater to very different audiences. But if you're listening to this one,

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Right, now today, we're going to be talking about the FA Cup final which of course, this Saturday. I am joined by the official FA Cup historian. Is that right? Miguel Delaney from The Independent. I did do the official book. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You have quite literally written the book on the FA Cup. Not a lot of people can say that. And, of course, Jonathan Wilson. How are you? So we wanted to start by talking about how, the ultimate football journalism question, just how big is the FA Cup

final? Because I think for, I think all three of us in various sense, we grew up with the

FA Cup final being, being the biggest, the biggest show in town, really, like the climax,

the English football season and the

most important moment of the English football season. But Jonathan, it doesn't really, that isn't

the case anymore, is it? No, it's not. I think actually a large part of this is just there's so

much more football on TV. Now, that obviously has a financial impact as well, but, you know,

the FA Cup final, it was a game you knew would be on and so that

one saturday in may you would plan a whole load of stuff around it i mean i remember at the age of

six being absolutely furious to find out that we were going on holiday to derbyshire when the ethical final be on. And so literally

for like weeks beforehand, I was sort of pestering my mum and dad saying, where are we going to

watch the cup final? And we watched it in a barn in Derbyshire with a few other people. It's quite

nice. Yeah, very good game, too too. You know, famous Gordon Smith missing the great chance in the

final minute. So it was, it was a huge thing just because the media was different in those days.

There wasn't half a dozen games on every day.

That that was the one match you watch.

And so even if it was a terrible game, it didn't really matter because it was football on TV.

Whereas now, you know, a lot of cup finals, a lot of finals are poor games. They're destroyed by the anxiety of both teams, by the stakes, often yet mismatches in the cup finals, not necessarily you're two huge teams. Now that can produce good games, obviously. I mean, you look at, I don't know, Palace for United in 1990 was a great game. Ahold of the Arsenal in, when was that, 2014, was a great game but you know we've also seen some pretty bad cup finals

and whole of the Arsenal in, when was that, 2014, was a great game. But, you know, we've also seen

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