⚽️THE FA CUP 3RD ROUND
ARSENAL vs LIVERPOOL is an easy headline, but what about the return of the Tyne-Wear Derby?
“The Magic of the FA Cup” is a bit tired and trite at this point, but the world’s oldest football competition really can serve up some amazing stuff, particularly in the Third Round. That’s when the big boys from the Premier League and the Championship enter the fray, having enjoyed byes across the first two rounds of the tournament. (There are also six qualifying rounds, where clubs enter at various points depending on how far down the league system they are. The smallest minnows play their first matches in August.) This is the stage where a top-shelf team can face a League Two outfit—or lower—and there’s nearly always an upset. It’s knockout football, a one-off, and anybody get get beat.
There are titanic clashes, too, in this case a meeting of Arsenal and Liverpool. The random draw can also reignite vicious rivalries, and that’s true this weekend as Newcastle visit Sunderland for the Tyne and Wear Derby. Speaking of which…
SATURDAY
SUNDERLAND vs NEWCASTLE (7:45am ET, 12:45pm GMT)
A lot of the headlines leading into this one feature calls for calm from the local police, so it’s fair to say this match is no joke. The away fans get a larger allocation of tickets for an FA Cup match than they would in league play, so 6,000 Newcastle supporters will make the trip to Sunderland for the early kickoff. They won’t be using public transport, however: for security reasons, they’ll have to make use of round-trip bus service from St. James’ Park to the Stadium of Light.
The Northumbria police announced as much in a statement that also made clear to “anyone who is intent on using the game as an excuse to cause trouble that this will not be tolerated,” and that “anyone found responsible will subsequently face tough action, including criminal prosecution and being handed a football banning order.”
This is the Tyne-Wear Derby, named for the rivers that run through Newcastle and Sunderland respectively. The beef goes well beyond football, by The Guardian’s account, deeply rooted in 17th-century disputes over royal trading rights for coal that ultimately put these two towns, 12 miles apart, on opposite sides of the English Civil War. Newcastle, whose traders had consistently been granted trading rights, sided with King Charles I. Sunderland, which had been spurned by the king and economically battered as a result, went with Oliver Cromwell’s Parliamentarians. There was even a battle on a field between the two cities, with Sunderland and its Scottish allies seizing victory—and eventually the town of Newcastle. 358 years later, in March 2000, fans of the two towns’ football clubs met and once again spilled blood in “some of the worst football-related violence ever seen in Britain.” And that’s saying something.
The two biggest clubs in the North East of England have battled 155 times with astonishingly even results: each side has won 53 matches, with 49 draws. The recent meetings have been less so, however, as Sunderland have won six of the last seven and lost none. That might be something of a surprise considering the Black Cats have suffered through a disastrous decade.
After a couple of near-scrapes with relegation from the Premier League, they dropped through the Moon Door in 2017 and fell straight through the Championship to League One the next season. The club’s fortunes mirrored that of Sunderland itself in its post-industrial decline, and the saga made for a great Netflix series with a terrible intro song. They’ve since battled back up into the Championship and sit sixth, in the hunt for the promotion playoffs, but all this is why we’re about to see the first Tyne-Wear Derby in nearly eight years.
Newcastle’s fortunes have been incredibly different. They’ve left their scraps with relegation behind and, powered by a takeover from a group led by the Saudi Public Investment Fund, have risen to battling A.C. Milan and Paris Saint-Germain in the Champions League this season. They travel to Wearside as perhaps the firmest favorites they’ve ever been since the footballing chapter of this blood feud began in the 1880s. The Magpies are in an injury crisis, however, and this is a derby, and this is the FA Cup.
CHELSEA vs PRESTON NORTH END (12:30pm ET, 5:30pm GMT)
Something about this fixture says UPSET. The vibes would be even more pronounced if Chelsea were traveling for this one, but even at Stamford Bridge, the Blues’ form is pretty middling this season. You never know what you’re going to get with Mauricio Pochettino’s young team. Preston will wish they could host this one at Deepdale, an ancient home for an ancient club. Officially founded in 1880—though they were playing matches earlier—North End is a quarter century older than Chelsea, and the club stamped its name into legend almost immediately. In 1889, the first season of the Football League, Preston went unbeaten in the new competition and the FA Cup, the first English club to win a double and claim the name “The Invincibles.”
ARANDINA vs REAL MADRID (3:30pm ET, 8:30pm GMT)
Spain’s Copa del Rey hits a similar stage this weekend, which is how you find mighty Madrid visiting a 6,000-capacity stadium. Fourth-tier outfit Arandina have battled through two rounds of this knockout competition already, dispatching Càdiz last time out to claim a La Liga scalp. Real, the reigning champions of this competition, will be a far tougher proposition. For Arandina’s semi-pros, this will be the game of their lives on what’s reportedly quite a small pitch at the Estadio El Montecillo. It’s not too much of a trek from Madrid to Aranda de Duero, a smallish city in Spain’s Castile and León region, but that doesn’t mean it will be pleasant for Los Merengues.
SUNDAY
SHREWSBURY TOWN vs WREXHAM (9:00am ET, 2:00pm GMT)
You could go for Luton-Bolton or West Ham-Bristol City in this match window, but why not check in for a true lower-league scrap? Shrewsbury are mid-table in League One, England’s third tier, while their guests are surging up the English football pyramid on some Hollywood star power. Wrexham’s new owners have fished this grand old club out of non-League obscurity, and now they sit third in League Two hunting a second consecutive promotion. A fairytale FA Cup run is just what script doctors Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney ordered.
ARSENAL vs LIVERPOOL (11:30am ET, 4:30pm GMT)
This here’s the big one, a rendezvous of first and fourth in the Premier League. It’s one of three meetings between these two in the space of six weeks: they drew 1-1 at Anfield last month, and they’ll meet again in the league at the beginning of February. Both spent the first half of the season revving up their title-chasing engines, and on paper, they’ll be taking this match the least seriously of all their encounters.
Except Arsenal are in an atrocious run of results at the moment, in desperate need of a new story for the new year. Liverpool have a (different) cup semifinal three days later, which will soak up some of their attention, but they’re not in the business of going out in the Third Round. They’ve only exited at this stage once in the last 12 years, though Arsenal have knocked them out of this competition eight times, thrice since 2001. This is, after all, the only trophy the North Londoners have had much success with since the mid-2000s. They’ve won it four times in the last decade.
Ultimately, this may come down to whether these two Play The Kids or go strong, or whether they’re on different pages altogether. Mikel Arteta and Jürgen Klopp played fairly nice at Anfield last month, but the weight of evidence suggests they are not huge fans of one another. They certainly never like to lose, and Arteta in particular is in fairly desperate need of a result. It could get a bit angsty out there on the Emirates carpet.
ROMA vs ATALANTA (2:45pm ET, 7:45pm GMT)
If you’re fed up on the romance of knockout cup football, Italy bucks the trend this weekend with some Serie A action. (The Coppa Italia is already at the quarterfinal stage after the Round of 16 finished up in midweek.) José Mourinho’s Roma have a Capital Derby against Lazio in the cup next week, but first they face the team one point ahead of them in the table. They beat Napoli before suffering a 1-0 loss to relentless Juventus last time out. Atalanta have won three of their last four in the league, including victory over Milan last month.
REVEL vs PSG (2:45pm ET, 7:45pm GMT)
The video went worldwide: the playing squad of sixth-division Union Sportive Revéloise watched the Coupe de France draw live on television and exploded in glee as they drew the giants of Paris Saint-Germain. This is what it means to amateur players—who work day jobs and reportedly train twice a week—to share a field with perennial Champions League contenders. Each might even get the chance to get roasted by Kylian Mbappé, though Luis Enrique could rotate the PSG team pretty heavily. It’ll all go down on a different field from where Revel normally play: the Stade Municipal de Revel only houses 3,500, so they’ll host this one at a rugby stadium a few towns over in Castres.
MONDAY
WIGAN ATHLETIC vs MAN UNITED (3:15pm ET, 8:15pm GMT)
It’s a short trip to an old Premier League stomping ground for Manchester United, as they travel 25 miles from Old Trafford to the DW Stadium to face Wigan Athletic. The Latics were stalwarts in England’s top division from 2005 to 2013, but relegation was a brutal blow and now they find themselves in League One. They did win the FA Cup three days before their relegation was confirmed, however, with a famous 1-0 win over Manchester City in the final. There’s some giant-killing pedigree, then, and few giants are as liable to faceplant as Manchester United are at the moment. Plus, Wigan have James Carragher, 21-year-old son of Jamie, at centerback. He’ll carry the torch for United’s hated rivals Liverpool.⚽︎