Why those who cherish the soul and magic of the FA Cup will be cheering for Crystal Palace to beat mighty Man City at Wembley, writes IAN HERBERT

Daily Mail​

13-05-2025

There have been times these past nine months when the FA Cup has seemed to be breathing its last: devalued, diminished and crushed into virtual irrelevance by football's high-and-mighty elite.
The abolition of replays, fourth-round matches spread over five days and the setting of this Saturday's final amid the penultimate instalment of the Premier League season. We didn't even get a kick-off time for the final until early May.
Yet despite the myriad betrayals, the unquenchable prospect of romance is still there for Saturday. In finalists Crystal Palace, we have a thread back through some of the old competition's most heady days. The agonies of 1990, when Manchester United 's Mark Hughes equalised in that unforgettable 3-3 final and, after Palace had lost the replay, the same heartbreak to the same opponents in extra time, 26 years later.
It's the way that Palace have survived in the jungle of clubs owned by self-selecting oligarchs, sheiks and hedge-fund traders with the odd half a billion to spare which most contributes to the sense that to see them beat Abu Dhabi's Manchester City on Saturday would be so special.
In many ways, they are a gravity-defying miracle: one of four Premier League sides, with Southampton, Ipswich and Brentford, never to have spent more than £30million on a player. A club who have only twice sold a player for more than £30m.
They are about to complete a 12th consecutive season in the Premier League. To go with their extraordinary consistency — they've always finished between 10th and 15th — is an acceptance among fans that joy must be found in something other than fabulous winning runs and a gorgeous football aesthetic.
The presence, for example, of young men such as Eberechi Eze, Wilfried Zaha, Nathaniel Clyne and others, many long gone, who have bound the club to its south London community and deconstructed the idea that 'Premier League' and 'local team' are mutually exclusive.
Much of that is down to Steve Parish, who rescued the club from near liquidation 15 years ago and really is a supporter — desperate, in a way that the sheiks and the investment guys never will be, to make the club the beating heart of its community.
He has challenged the Premier League's self-styled elite, who have patronised and looked down on clubs like his own. He fought their European Super League breakaway tooth and nail and found the backlash to it a source of liberation; the point which seemed to cut the grasping, spiritually remote 'Big Six' down to size. 'It's like emerging from a slightly abusive relationship,' he told me then.
Parish was struck, a few years back, by the cup exploits of Villarreal, the ceramics town with a 50,000 population near Valencia who had beaten Manchester United in the final of the Europa League.
He felt the outcome gave belief to every fan outside of the supposed elite. It reminded us that cups had a way of transcending the hierarchies, he told me.
It is an instructive comparison because Villarreal's philosophy does mirror Palace's. Around the time that Parish was buying Palace, the Spanish club were beset by a recessionary chill which hit their owner's ceramics business.
The club released or sold nine established players, including Robert Pires, to reduce the wage bill by 15 per cent and promoted 10 of the club's 'B' side to the first team. And gradually the 'Yellow Submarine', who train down a stone track at a former olive grove called La Ciudad Deportiva, began to thrive, initially under Manuel Pellegrini.
The philosophy has been the same ever since: buy individuals on modest salaries whom you can move on, and build a production line of players by investing heavily in a cantera (academy). Villarreal take £54m in La Liga TV income, compared with Real Madrid's £127m, yet they still sit fifth in the table today. Their motto is Endavant — Forward.
This weekend is the chance for Oliver Glasner's side to become club heroes
For City, the FA Cup will be a matter of routine this Saturday. Seven successive semi-finals and the chance to compensate for a bad league season. No vast excitement in east Manchester. For Palace, it is the chance to make history and win a first ever trophy.
'In your life, something has to matter,' Parish told me a few years ago, when an Amazon documentary on the club, When Eagles Dare, was screened. 'What actually matters, after your family? What matters? Your football team.'
For all who cherish the soul and the magic of the FA Cup — the eternal optimism it engenders about modest teams being winners, too — there can only be one team at Wembley to root for.
Tough questions need answers after Superbikes tragedy
The need for sensitivity was obvious after the tragedy at Oulton Park a week ago left two families in mourning.
But the grief and loss did not justify the deliberate evasion by race organisers of the British Superbikes Championship, who refused my request for any kind of discussion about some of the questions which the deaths of young Briton Owen Jenner and New Zealander Shane Richardson had raised.
If a high-profile sport shut the door on a legitimate inquiry in that way, there would certainly be outrage.
Arsenal fall short again
Arsenal might feel they've done their best without a serviceable striker this season, but by calculations I've done to establish where the best value resides in the Premier League, they've failed.
I've divided the cost of each club's cheapest season ticket by the number of points each side has secured at home and Arsenal fans, based on a £1,073 cheapest season ticket, are paying out £29.81 per point. That's fifth from bottom of the table.
Manchester City are way out ahead for value, at £10.08 per point. The top five in descending order: City, Liverpool, Brentford, Forest and West Ham.
And from the bottom up: Southampton, Ipswich, Tottenham, Leicester and Arsenal. I'll look at other leagues in more detail next week.
Ashworth to flourish with the FA after Man United horror show
The return of Dan Ashworth to the FA is shrewd for all concerned, given the role he played in building the framework which allowed Gareth Southgate to thrive.
Thomas Tuchel appears less wedded to the idea of an England for the future. We can only hope that the outlook of Ashworth — mercifully free of Sir Jim Ratcliffe's car-crash strategies at Manchester United — will prevail.
Test cricket worse off without Kohli
It is Test cricket's loss that the great Virat Kohli has retired, because the most beautiful form of the game, which so badly needs its crusaders, has lost one of its best.
'There's something deeply personal about playing in whites,' he said on Monday.
'The quiet grind, the long days, the small moments that no one sees but that stay with you for ever.' Exquisite words.