Half Decent FA Cup Final Shock

First my complaints about the FA Cup final. Penalties are no way to decide a trophy. They aren't even very interesting any more. And if we must have them, let's just skip straight to them after regular time ends. Extra time is almost always just half an hour of exhausted players whacking the ball up and scuttling half-heartedly after it. On that subject: why were Liverpool and West Ham so ridiculously unfit? Even before the 90 minutes were up there were half a dozen players going down with cramp. At times the pitch looked like a Black Death re-enactment. A standard piece of 'action' towards the end was a man staggering forward, getting a cross in and instantly collapsing, clutching his calf. Finally, Leslie Garrett, if you're reading this: the last line of 'Abide With Me' is "Abide with me." It isn't "Aaaa-biyiyide wi-yi-yi-yi-yi-th muuu-ye-ye-ye-ye-ye." If you can't hold a note for more than two seconds, don't become a singer.

Otherwise it was a fantastic game. 3:3 and all the goals were entertaining. Carragher doing an Ali Shuffle to neatly slot the ball into his own net. The otherwise brilliant Reina spilling a weak shot right into Ashton's path. Cisse pulling the score back to 2:1 and bringing the game to life again. Gerrard finishing a training ground move with unnecessary venom. Konchesky totally mis-hitting a cross and then watching the ball inexplicably loop into the top corner. Finally a half-fit Gerrard (cramp, of course) receiving the ball about 30 yards out, being too knackered to do anything other than whack it and somehow score. In general, two sides stubbornly refusing to admit defeat and, for once, translating this into an urge to play good football rather than clatter each other.

The FA Cup deserved a final like this. The much-overrated tournament has been surprisingly wonderful this year. Think of Liverpool's 5:3 win over Luton in an earlier round which featured one of the most hilarious goals ever - Alonso scoring from the half way line after the Luton keeper had rushed up for a corner. A dreadful Coventry side coming back from 2:0 down against Spurs to win 3:2 thanks to a previously and subsequently unknown Dutch striker. Burton Albion holding Manchester Utd, Nuneaton Borough - whoever the hell they are - doing likewise to Middlesborough. And Chelsea losing. Not the greatest game ever but Chelsea losing in any circumstances always brings cheer to the soul.

I can't welcome this totally whole-heartedly. There's going to be an awful lot of rubbish written about this year's FA Cup in coming years by the romantics, the self-appointed defenders of football's soul. They always hold the tournament up as somehow purer than the league or European competitions. While the latter are wholly commerical nowadays, they claim, the FA Cup is still true to the spirit of football. This has little to do with reality. Organised by the grasping Football Association, the Cup embraces sponsorship in almost every form and many of the tickets for the final are given to corporate clients. And for all the talk about the Cup being a great leveller, look at the winners in recent years: Liverpool twice, Arsenal three times, Man Utd once. It's no less the property of the big clubs than the Premiership. I suspect a lot of the 'romance' is because it was originally contested by public school sides, not those grubby northern clubs who went on to form the League and create modern football.

But the game at its best can still silence all the caveats. Watching a mediocre stopper like Danny Gabbidon humiliate Liverpool's millionaire strikers, or Steven Gerrard beligerrantly pull his side forward, I was reminded why I keep getting drawn back to it. We just need a decent Champions League final now and I might even start looking forward to the World Cup.