by Chris Harris
When a Dream Come True Suddenly Felt Like a Nightmare
If you’d said to any Crystal Palace supporter at the beginning of last season that Palace were going to win the FA Cup, we’d have bitten your hand off. After all, this club with its history, heart and loyal support, lifting football’s oldest trophy for the first time in its 164-year history was the stuff of dreams. And that’s exactly what happened when Palace stunned Manchester City 1-0 at Wembley last May in one of the biggest cup final upsets in living memory.
That victory was more than just silverware. It was a reminder that the FA Cup can still deliver true magic, that the tournament isn’t just a preserve of the elite, megabucks clubs.
And yet… just months later, the FA Cup served up an even more eye-watering surprise. Crystal Palace — defending champions — were knocked out at the first hurdle by Macclesfield, a sixth-tier side sitting 117 league places below them, in what has already been labelled the greatest giant-killing in FA Cup history.
Those 1,500 or so Eagles fans who made the long trip will remember it as one of the most crushing days in recent memory. But for neutral football supporters, and many Palace fans too, it was a brilliant day for the FA Cup itself. A competition where anyone really can win. Even the holders.
There’s no getting around it: the FA Cup hasn’t always felt like the competition it once was. In its early decades, dozens of clubs, big and small, won the trophy. The FA Cup has been contested since 1871-72, and 45 different clubs have lifted it over the history of the competition.
But in the modern era, especially since the explosion of Premier League money and the focus on European competition, the winners’ list has increasingly read like a who’s who of the wealthiest giants of English football. In the last 25 seasons alone, only a handful of clubs have claimed the trophy. Teams like Arsenal, Manchester United, Chelsea, Liverpool and Manchester City have dominated the honours, while “cup shocks” from lower-league sides have become fewer and further between. It has become stale and interest has dramatically declined.
This concentration mirrors broader trends in the game. Researchers studying the competition have argued that growing inequality between clubs and divisions has hollowed out interest in inter-divisional matches, making early FA Cup ties feel less compelling to fans and broadcasters alike.
As fans, we saw it ourselves. My friends and I in the 90s had 4 fixtures we all met up for, Christmas and New Year’s Eve, birthdays, the FA Cup Final and the traditional synced roar when the first of us went for a pee and ended up with trousers around their ankles in excitement, running back. But once European nights and league money took centre stage, the FA Cup sometimes felt like an afterthought for the elite clubs, who treated it as a distraction from Champions League or Premier League ambitions, but such is the class in funding of clubs now, won it anyway.
Two Unforgettable Results That Might Just Save the Competition
What Palace’s win v Man City 2025 Wembley and subsequent defeat, Macclesfield 2-1 Place seven months later, their next game in the competition, have done, perhaps unintentionally, is breathe fresh narrative vitality into the FA Cup.
For years, the trophy was regularly won by the same handful of elite clubs: Arsenal, Manchester United, Liverpool, Chelsea and Manchester City appear time and again on the winners’ list. Only a handful of teams outside that elite group have managed to lift the Cup in recent history. But that’s precisely what made Palace’s 2025 triumph so special.
And then came Macclesfield.
A non-league side beating the defending champions is the kind of story that reminds fans why they fell in love with this competition in the first place, giant-killings, true upsets, magic moments. Football thrives on unpredictability, and in a world where big clubs are thought to be able to outspend and outmuscle everyone else, results like these restore faith in the beautiful game.
It also helps that the BBC are pushing the FA Cup harder than they have in years, other sports like the Traitors still pimped heavily, but not actual sport, giving it prominent coverage and celebrating its quirks and narratives.
So, to Palace supporters: cherish that Cup win. And yes, endure the defeat. Because if you look at the bigger picture, both results have done more for the FA Cup’s soul than a decade of predictable finals ever could. In an age where football’s moneyed elite dominate most competitions, this oldest domestic cup still finds a way to remind us: here, anything’s possible.
With Crystal Palace single-handedly for the right and wrong reasons, noticeably lifting the public interest in the FA Cup, it will be interesting to see if viewing figures will begin to rise back up again, and it becomes the English institution it once was, not a statue marking the decline of our great game into rank commercialism and greed
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