The 2023-24 FA Cup will reach its conclusion tomorrow in front of 90,000 supporters at Wembley Stadium and a global television audience running into millions.
In a repeat of last year’s final, Manchester City will look to complete back-to-back Premier League and FA Cup doubles for the first time in history while their rivals, Manchester United, will aim to move within one of Arsenal’s record of 14 FA Cup wins. The final will pit two of the world’s richest, best-known clubs against each other.
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Yet this season’s FA Cup began in August 2023 with ties between part-time teams, often played in front of fewer than 100 spectators. The competition seems to be under constant threat, with Premier League and Championship managers routinely resting players from ties to prioritise the league and, from next season, the scrapping of replays from the first round onwards.
The road to Wembley this season has passed through 13 rounds and 729 ties across England and Wales, creating memories and transforming clubs at every level of the English football ‘pyramid’.
The Athletic has spoken to one from each round in search of the real meaning of the FA Cup.
Extra preliminary round — Histon (Cambridgeshire)
Few giant killings in FA Cup history top a postman from a village team knocking out Leeds United in the second round but Histon will always hold tight to that memory from over 15 years ago.
“We’ve spiralled downwards somewhat since we played Leeds,” says John Payne, match secretary. “Even so, that day in November 2008 defines the club. We disappeared almost to oblivion, we’re now step five (of the non-League pyramid), due mainly to money issues.
“But we can go anywhere, say we’re from Histon on the edge of Cambridge and they have no clue. If we say we’re the team that beat Leeds on TV on a really wet day, they remember immediately. We have pictures up in the clubhouse — and always will.”
Now playing in the United Counties football league, Histon were knocked out by Ipswich Wanderers in the extra preliminary round in early August.
🗣 "The postman delivers the opening goal for Histon!"
📆 13 years ago today, @HistonFC knocked out Leeds United in the #EmiratesFACup Second Round. pic.twitter.com/gcGKjzcVGT
— Emirates FA Cup (@EmiratesFACup) November 30, 2021
“Every year the FA Cup comes around and people look to see who we are playing in the hope we make some progress. Around the village, people get excited by the mention of the cup. It would be lovely to have another little run. Nowadays, the money is the most important thing. More often than not, we’re thinking about whether we can meet the costs of training facilities or new kits for the under-13s than signing players.
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“So having the money from the FA Cup is a bonus and you don’t budget for it. When it comes in, it’s there for when you really need it because the toilets will break or a fence will blow down. You’ve got the money there thanks to the FA Cup to pay for it.”
Usual attendance: approximately 190
Money made: £800-£1,000
Importance factor: Financially, crucial. Emotionally, it provided the best day in the club’s history.
Preliminary round — West Allotment Celtic (North East)
Formed in 1928 at a Methodist Church in the village of West Allotment, between Newcastle and Whitley Bay, Celtic have no famous FA Cup deeds to speak of — no appearances in the first round or giant-killings — and this year they exited at the second hurdle, 2-0 at the hands of Tadcaster Albion, having beaten Sunderland RCA in the extra preliminary round. Yet the pride of being part of the competition is clear.
“Getting through a couple of rounds is memorable for us but it’s something that everybody looks forward to because you get media coverage and financial rewards, although that has been cut over the years,” said chairman David Dodds.
“In the Women’s FA Cup this year, the first two rounds were worth £750 and then £1,800 whereas the men’s equivalent was nowhere near that. For us, winning one game this year was worth between £600 and £700 and yet, if you speak to clubs, the prize money is more important at our level than to the big clubs later on.
Photos from todays 2-0 FA cup defeat to @TadcasterAlbion pic.twitter.com/wyGwIjlPyF
— West Allotment Celtic FC (@wacfc) August 19, 2023
“In recent years, we drew our neighbours, Whitley Bay, at home and got about 440 people in and we won so, with the raffle and everything else plus the prize money, we’d have made around £3,000, which is massive. Everybody still looks forward to it. There is a buzz, especially in the North East of England, where the FA Cup for Newcastle United and Sunderland fans is something special.”
Usual attendance: Approximately 100
Money made: Approximately £1,000
Importance factor: Financially, handy. Emotionally, huge
First qualifying round — Okehampton Argyle (Devon)
In their 97-year history, the small community club on the edge of Dartmoor had never competed in the FA Cup… until this season.
Clubs from ‘step six’ — six levels below the EFL — are not routinely invited to compete, but this year spare places became available and Okehampton’s application was accepted. They will not be in the competition next season, with no spots available to step six sides, but their only FA Cup season could hardly have gone better.
They progressed through the extra preliminary round by beating step-five Brixham 2-0 in a replay, and Buckland Athletic, also of step five, 2-1 in another replay in the preliminary round before losing to another step-five side, Highworth Town, 2-1 in the first qualifying round.
Take a look at our ‘work day’ carried out on Saturday which saw players and volunteers put a shift in as we continued work on the fence surrounding the pitch as we look to get our facilities ready for the new season ahead, more updates coming soon… 🟡🔵 pic.twitter.com/2vsBiBsJw5
— Okehampton Argyle FC (@OkeArgyle) June 5, 2023
Manager Dale Chadwick tells The Athletic: “We usually get between 80 and 120 people watching us for a normal league game, but for the FA Cup it was around 500. We have a lot of junior teams, and the buzz the FA Cup created among them was huge. We did a lot of ground improvements in the last couple of years, with a new perimeter fence and other things, and it cost us pretty much every penny we had, so the money we raised from the FA Cup helped replace that and make the club stable again.”
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Usual attendance: Approximately 100
Money made: Approximately £20,000
Importance factor: Genuinely historic
Second qualifying round — Cray Wanderers (London)
Chelsea, Arsenal and Tottenham Hotspur can boast about having some of the world’s best players or winning the FA Cup but none of them can claim the title belonging to Cray Wanderers of the Isthmian League Premier Division. ‘The oldest club in London’ has a nice ring to it and belongs to the Wanderers, who were founded in 1860 and play in England’s seventh tier.
“It’s massive to clubs at our level because if you can get a good cup run, it brings so many opportunities in terms of exposure and there’s a real financial incentive as well,” says CEO Sam Wright. “This year, even though the FA Cup is nearly over and the final is on Saturday, I’m still peeved about the way we went out of it.
“We were 2-0 up with seven minutes to go and ended up drawing the game 2-2, then we lost the replay. Ramsgate went really far and got to play AFC Wimbledon away in the second round.
“It does really impact you. We’ve never made it to the first round, so that’s a holy grail for us. Next season will be the first time in our history that we have played in our own ground. In our 164-year history, we have literally been the Wanderers, using other people’s grounds. The cup brings vital money that you just can’t budget for, everything is a bonus.”
Usual attendance: Approximately 300
Money made: Combined with FA Trophy winnings, a figure up to £10,000
Importance factor: A financial boost, historically significant
Third qualifying round — Nantwich Town (Cheshire)
Remember the name Andy Locke — it might just help if your next pub quiz has an FA Cup round. The former Nantwich Town player still holds the record for the fastest hat-trick in the history of the competition when he netted three goals in two minutes and 20 seconds against Droylsden in a 1995 preliminary round tie. The Dabbers’ (Nantwich’s excellent nickname) place in cup history was sealed.
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“The FA Cup has always been important to us,” says director Tim Crighton. “We’ve been to the first round proper three times (in 2011, 2017 and 2019) which is not bad for a club at our level.”
“Being involved in the early rounds, it’s always a prestigious thing for us, probably more so than how it feels for Premier League clubs. We never budget for cup revenue because it could be a false dawn. You’re always sat there hoping for a cup run because to run a club at our level you need to make about £600,000 a season to break even. An FA Cup run like the last time we got to the first round made us about £30,000 alone.
“This year, we’ve been able to invest in new LED lights inside because our energy bills were up to nearly £10,000 a month. I’m a Spurs fan and a Nantwich Town fan and the excitement stays with me. The magic hasn’t been lost on me and at non-League level it is still very exciting.”
Usual attendance: Approximately 450
Money made: Combined with FA Trophy winnings, approximately £34,000
Importance factor: A financial boost, historically significant
Fourth-round qualifying — Stourbridge (West Midlands)
The War Memorial Ground, on the edge of town, which Stourbridge share with the cricket club, is where a young Jude Bellingham watched his prolific father, Mark, plunder goals for the club in the early 2000s.
It has been the scene of epic FA Cup adventures in the last 15 years. Having never reached the first round until 2009, the Glassboys have reached the second round four times and the third round once and beaten two EFL sides, Plymouth Argyle and Northampton Town.
“We reached the third round in 2017 and lost 2-1 at Wycombe and our fans still tell me it was the best day of their lives,” says long-serving chairman Andy Pountney.
“The money we made from our first cup run, which was in excess of £100,000, helped us establish the club into what it is now: a stable club at step three of non-League and pushing for the play-offs in the last few seasons. And we’ve gone on to have another couple of memorable cup runs, which has allowed us to do a lot of work around the ground, refurbishing things, putting terracing in and replacing the dressing rooms.”
This season Stourbridge fell one win short of reaching the first round, losing 3-0 to Gateshead of the National League. And Pountney says the drop in prize money that hit in 2020 due to Covid-19, but has never been reversed, is a blow to non-League clubs.
“If we’d have reached the fourth qualifying round a few years, we would have earned around £64,000 and this year we earned around £30,000. Cutting the money in half has a massive detrimental effect to clubs like us, so it’s not the cash cow that it was.”
Usual attendance: Around 700
Money made: Approximately £30,000
Importance factor: Financially diminishing but emotionally as big as ever
First round proper — Lincoln City (Lincolnshire)
History will not forget Lincoln’s remarkable FA Cup run in 2017, when they reached the quarter-finals of the competition while still playing in the National League (fifth tier). Ipswich Town, Brighton and Burnley all fell to Danny Cowley’s side before they were knocked out by Arsenal.
It laid the foundation for their progression up the leagues to the third tier in League One, where they were eliminated in the first round by Morecambe this season.
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“We’re a club that has to have every piece of the model working to have the proper business outcome,” says Lincoln majority owner Harvey Jabara. “To be a sustainable club, you have ticket revenue, sponsorships and the natural business part of football but also player trading and cup runs are vital to a club like Lincoln financially.
“We as a club take cup runs very seriously. Some clubs have the luxury of saying it’s for the younger players and it gives a rest for the first XI — but we don’t see it that way.
📆 On this day in 2017, Sean Raggett scored against Burnley to secure our place in the Quarter Finals of the @EmiratesFACup! pic.twitter.com/tJMWMivrBd
— Lincoln City FC 🇺🇦 (@LincolnCity_FC) February 18, 2022
“We want to perform in cup runs because I don’t know of another competition that intrigues and attracts me more than the FA Cup. There is something about every club having a shot that is so special. It’s not just the financial point of view; it’s the glory of the game. In the first round, we know we’ll play a team in the tiers below us and we’ve had a rough couple of years in the FA Cup. Much as I love it, once we’re eliminated I don’t want to hear about it.
“It’s an integral part of Lincoln City from a football and a financial point of view. It’s a significant part of this club because of the history in the competition.”
Usual attendance: Approximately 8,500
Money made: Approximately £1.3million from their 2017 cup run. This season, significantly less.
Importance factor: Financially, a bonus. Emotionally and historically, huge.
Second round — Ramsgate (Kent)
“Before I got involved in non-League football, my FA Cup memories were just as a West Ham supporter and really for Premier League clubs it’s not as important as the bread and butter of getting into Europe or avoiding relegation,” admits James Lawson, chairman of Ramsgate.
“It’s only since getting involved in the non-League game that I’ve realised the power it has to bring communities together.”
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The Isthmian League South East Divison club (four levels below the English Football League) reached the second round by beating Bexhill United 4-1, Northwood 3-0, Cray Wanderers 3-2, Frome Town 2-1, all in front of fewer than 750 people, before 3,000 attended their 2-1 home win over Woking in the first round and 6,893 saw them lose 5-0 away to former winners AFC Wimbledon in the second round.
Most of the estimated £150,000 profit from the cup run has been put aside to help with the £250,000 replacement of their artificial pitch, which is due in around five years.
“Our match-day experience is very much like a carnival, with kids, parents, aunts, uncles, grandparents. But in the FA Cup run, I noticed a lot more footballing fans,” says Lawson. “People around our way who support Gillingham, Charlton, Arsenal, Tottenham took notice of their local club and maybe shunned the professional clubs and decided to come here instead.
“We ended up with an average gate of 1,100, which I believe is the highest anywhere in the country for a step-four club, and the groundswell of support around the FA Cup definitely helped that to grow. We saw that this week when we launched our season tickets. Last year, on day one, we sold about 20 and this year on day one we sold about 100.”
Usual attendance: 1,100
Money made: Approximately £150,000
Importance factor: Financially big, culturally bigger
Third round — Aldershot Town (Hampshire)
The National League club have never been beyond the fifth round so this season’s run to round three, where they lost away to West Bromwich Albion of the Championship, was one of the best in their history. They progressed through three rounds to set up their trip to The Hawthorns, including an incredible 7-4 victory away to League Two side Swindon Town in the first round, in which Aldershot went 7-0 up, and then beating eventual League Two champions Stockport County away too.
For chairman Shahid Azeem, it cemented a love for the FA Cup that began shortly after he moved to the UK from Pakistan in 1969. “The FA Cup to me is the ultimate cup competition,” he said. “The first FA Cup final I saw was Chelsea against Leeds in 1970 and I became a Chelsea fan off the back of that. I just love the FA Cup and when I was growing up, in the week of the final the whole week in the media was devoted to it.
“I understand that that world has changed but that day would have been about getting up at 9am, watching the teams have their breakfast on TV, watch them on the coach, watch them walk out on the pitch and watch the game, then watch the celebration dinner at night.
“You get the emotion of the underdogs beating the Premier League boys. Financially it’s a big thing for clubs of our level and below and this season, because we played on terrestrial TV, we attracted a number of new fans who probably didn’t know we existed. And the money is huge because it’s money you don’t budget for.”
Normal attendance: 2,700
Money made: £250,000
Importance factor: Massive for finances and prestige
Fourth round — Newport County (Gwent, Wales)
Giant-killings and dramatic cup runs have come naturally for Newport County since their return to the EFL in 2013. Maybe it is the added motivation of beating the English or an inbuilt underdog spirit but no club from the lower leagues has enjoyed as much success as the League Two club in the last 11 years.
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There was a win over Leeds and a draw with Tottenham Hotspur in 2018, victories over Leicester City and Middlesbrough in 2019 and this season they nearly pulled off their biggest win yet when they put in a sturdy performance in a 4-2 defeat to Manchester United.
“I was driving down the M1, between my family home in Sheffield and Newport, when my phone started going crazy,” Newport manager Graham Coughlan told The Athletic.
“Man United were playing Wigan, and my wife and kids called. They were shouting and not making much sense. It was all ‘Man Utd this’ and ‘Man Utd that’. I support United — everyone in my family does, apart from one son who is a Sheffield Wednesday season ticket holder. I just assumed United had scored.
“Then my phone started going bang, bang, bang. I pulled over at the next services and read the messages. It was the FA Cup draw: ‘Eastleigh or Newport v Wigan or Man Utd’. I thought ‘Holy Jesus!’. It was surreal.
“I’ve been in professional football for 30 years as a player and a manager and waited for a draw against Man United. I continued my journey thinking, ‘This could be a once-in-a-lifetime experience, I’m not going to let that go.’ My players felt the same. We just had to beat Eastleigh — and we did.”
Coughlan was one of the more outspoken voices when the FA announced it would be scrapping replays after the first round next season, saying it was a “disaster for the EFL”. Newport’s replays at Barnet and Eastleigh this season, chosen for TV coverage, earned them an extra £30,000 and a replay against Spurs in 2018 earned a replay in front of 38,947 at Wembley.
Coughan will not be alone in his belief that “it’s a shocking decision, absolutely shocking for football, the romance of the FA Cup and for all lower league clubs.”
Normal attendance: Approximately 4,200
Money made: Around £315,000
Importance factor: Part of the club’s modern identity
Fifth round — Maidstone United (Kent)
In a near-perfect two years for Ipswich, Maidstone United are the blot on their record. The Kent side were this year’s unlikely FA Cup heroes when George Elokobi guided them all the way to the fifth round where they eventually lost to Coventry City. From liquidation in 1992 to the phoenix club gradually rebuilding to their position in the sixth-tier National League South, Maidstone beat higher league opposition in three rounds of the cup before coming up short against Coventry.
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“We went out of business as a club and we started from scratch,” says CEO and director of football Bill Williams. “We went down 12 leagues and we came back again and in coming back we brought a lot of good faith and goodwill with us. So this huge bit of history-making in the FA Cup is really a little bit of the story of the club; it’s the icing on the cake that was already there.
“For everybody connected with it, it’s been a massive boost. It’s taken us global.”
Usual attendance: 2,000
Money made: Approximately £500,000
Importance factor: Financially crucial, emotionally the cherry on top of a remarkable rise
Quarter-finals — Leicester City
If winning the Premier League in 2016 was the high point of Leicester’s 140-year history then lifting the FA Cup for the first time five years later probably ranks second in their list of achievements, so few clubs of their size can claim to have such clear, recent evidence of the competition’s power. Yet with promotion back to the top flight this season’s overwhelming top priority, an FA Cup run felt from the outside like a potential distraction.
Still, though, more than 28,000 fans turned out at the King Power Stadium for their only home tie in this year’s competition as they beat Birmingham City 3-0 in round four. They eventually bowed out to Chelsea in the last eight but manager Enzo Maresca, who played in the FA Cup for West Brom, experienced equivalent competitions in Italy and Spain, and reached last year’s final as assistant manager at Manchester City, understands its history.
“Probably in Spain, the Copa del Rey is more or less the same with the environment and stadium — important and fantastic,” he said. “In Italy, (the Coppa Italia) is a bit less, but the FA Cup is the most important one. It gives the opportunity for everyone to join. It is a fantastic competition.”
Usual attendance: 31,000
Money made: Estimated between £1million and £1.5million
Importance factor: Big for fans, less so for club
Rob Tanner
Semi-finals — Coventry City
Coventry’s victory over Tottenham in the 1987 final — the only major honour in their 141-year history — is one of the most famous ever in the FA Cup. And 37 years later the club, now in the second tier, came within a penalty shootout of returning to the final this season, only to lose out to Manchester United in a dramatic semi-final.
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That came after a thrilling quarter-final away to Wolves, when they overcame a 2-1 deficit seven minutes into stoppage time to triumph 3-2 thanks to USMNT forward Haji Wright’s winner.
“There’s no doubt it’s been watered down significantly since the days when I was growing up and watching football,” says club legend Steve Ogrizovic, who was in goal in 1987 and now watches every game as a radio pundit.
“Back then, it was the single biggest football event in this country and it sat alongside the First Division championship, or the Premier League as it is now. It was a toss-up about what you’d rather win. There were sellout crowds on third-round day and nobody dreamed of playing weakened sides.
“There is not the same importance now as there was but it’s still massive and it gets bigger the further you get into the competition. For the players, the staff and the fans, it was just a wonderful run this season. For the fans, it’s a toss-up over which game they enjoyed more between the quarter-final win at Wolves and the semi-final heartbreak at Wembley.”
Normal attendance: 25,000
Money made: £2million-£2.5million
Importance factor: The thread that runs through the fabric of the club
Final — Manchester City
The Premier League’s biggest clubs are often accused of devaluing the FA Cup but Manchester City have lifted the trophy twice in the last five seasons, including making it part of an historic treble last season.
In the age of the Champions League and increasing Premier League riches, it is clear that the FA Cup is third by some distance in the list of priorities for England’s giant clubs. But manager Pep Guardiola insists he still understands its importance.
“It’s a competition that started from last year, from the low, low divisions, and everyone is in the draw,” he said. “You can play away in League One or the Conference or low divisions. (That is) how difficult and tough it is; everyone can beat everyone. So it’s special, we felt it. I think we’ve behaved really well except for one year. We always got to the semi-final, most of the time, and two times were in the final and we won.”
Normal attendance: 53,000
Money made: Lots
Importance factor: There is no treble without the FA Cup…
Sam Lee
(Top image: Maidstone fans during their FA Cup run. Photo: Simon Stacpoole/Offside/Offside via Getty Images)