Hello everybody and welcome to an F.A. Cup special weekend review edition of the Total Soccer show. My name is Taylor Rockwell. On the other end of the line, it's a man who knows all the tennis. It's Ryan Bailey. Hello, Ryan. Hello, Tate. I do know some of the tennis. That's as far as I go. So are we going total tennis show today? Is that how we're going to do it now that apparently that's taken over your entire life? Yeah, let's talk about racket sports. To give this some context, I am covering some tennis on the other side of the world right now, and it is keeping me up and depriving me of sleep, which is fun. Genuine question for being deprived of sleep, having to stay up late to cover an event. Would you rather cover tennis late night or would you

rather cover the F-A-Cup late night? Which would be more interesting to you? F-A-Cup, because it's the game I like much more than tennis. Okay. All right. But I asked that question because we are going to be talking F-A-Cup today, some of the games of interest. I'm not going to say the shock upsets or anything like that because I don't think there were any too big of results. But we wanted to start with sort of the conversation that has been doing the rounds for the last, I want to say, 400 years when it comes to the FA Cup, which is how long, I think how old that competition is. It's essentially, has it really lost the magic? Because we heard, I mean, I'm sure you heard growing up, I heard sort of in my 20s, the magic of the cup and how exciting it was. And I imagine there was a time when it was in a very exciting competition. These days, it doesn't feel quite like that. Ryan, do you still agree with that? That it maybe doesn't feel quite as special as it used to? Do you know there's that moment when you're growing up when Christmas Day doesn't feel quite as spectacular as it used to?

Yes. It's just another day at some point, isn't it? I think I've kind of reached that this year with the FA Cup because when I was a kid, I very much, I was a very big part of the narrative of the F Cup being very magic. I think as a Wimbledon fan when we're in the

90s, it was a huge part of our season. Some of the best games I've been to are FRA Cup games.

My best soccer memories, in fact, a particular game in the 96-97 season where we played

Manchester United and knocked the holders of said competition out of the Cup. That was one of my

finest soccer memories. But I sat down on Saturday morning, fired up ESPN Plus, just scrolling through. And I just felt a bit underwhelmed. I just felt, I'm not sure which one of these or any of these I want to watch, if I'm honest. And maybe we're spoiled. We've been spoiled because we've had a lot of festive fixtures to deal with and a lot of high quality entertainment in the past few weeks. And I just felt a little bit like, I don't really fancy any of these matchups. I know the big teams in this competition are going to be fielding weakened sides. I know it's going to be scrappy and there's going to be some play out fields I'm going to have to look at. And then you look at the, when you flick around these games, Taylor, you look at the stadiums there.

There was footage from Birmingham and from Swansea where they had like one stand open.

Even the fans aren't going along.

One of my best friends at home is a Millwall fan.

And I was texting him during the Millwall game.

I was watching it.

I was saying, so can I see you?

Because there's about 10 people in this stadium right now.

And he was like, no, I'm at home. I was like, why? He said, oh, I never go to the third round of the FA Cup. I was like, okay. This guy's a season ticket holder who goes to every game. he doesn't even bother show up to the third round anymore.

He will maybe only go when Millwall, his team,

who have never been a Premier League team,

only when it gets a bit spicier in this competition. show up to the third round anymore. He will maybe only go when Millwall, his team, who have never

been a Premier League team, only when it gets a bit spicier in this competition. So, I don't know, how do you feel about it? Am I just being a bit of a grouch about this? No, I don't think so. And I want to get into sort of why maybe it's lost some of the lust of why it's not quite the appointment TV that maybe it was before or appointment in-person viewing experience.

But I wanted to go back to your initial point about what it was for you, because I think for a lot of Americans who obviously did not grow up supporting a lower-level team, a lot of people tend to pick a team that resonates with them for whatever reason. Those tend to be the ones on TV. So you have a lot of people who like Premier League teams, maybe some teams who've been relegated out.

But you, Ryan, are coming from a unique experience of kind of supporting a team that has been up and down, has had highs and lows. I wanted to ask you, like, why was it so special for you growing up? Why did you have that sort of memory of the FA Cup? What was it that for people who maybe have never been to an FAA cup game or certainly never been to a a game when the FA Cup still sort of really mattered to people, why was it this unique experience? I think for a team like Wimbledon who I support, we've always had an underdog mentality. And I think when you get lower league teams to come against big teams in this competition, that's what it is. It's the underdog. There's no bigger thrill, like the game I mentioned, knocking the holders of the FA Cup out of the FA Cup when you're a tiny team like Wimbledon. And I get that I'm being grouchy about this because we're spoiled with watching top flight soccer, particularly in this country where we can watch as much as we like. But think of like a Rochdale fan. They're struggling in League 1. They might get relegated. They're battling with Wimbledon to get relegated in fact at the moment. And, you know, taking Newcastle to draw and getting a second leg out of that, that could pay, that second leg could pay their wage bill for a year. It's huge for them and it's huge for those fans. But, I know that that's just the other side of the coin, I guess. And I forgot on the original question now. But just why it was like what that atmosphere was like, why it felt so special to you as a youngster. And I feel like you've given us a good picture. Yeah, I think it was it was the underdog thing. But also the FA Cup was special. It just felt a bit more special. And I think a lot of it was FA Cup final day. It was, it was appointment viewing. It was

the whole day was dedicated to it. The BBC coverage of the tournament, of the final, sorry,

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