‘We’ll Be Back, We’ll Be Back. We’ll Be Back Again Next Month’

On Sunday, we saw one of the great FA Cup Semi-Finals of modern times.

I’d argue we saw possibly the only great FA Cup Semi-Final of modern times.

It had a lot going for it. Goals, drama, late penalties, VAR, an unlikely comeback; even a goalscorer putting on a Mexican wrestling mask after scoring. Wolves were the unlucky losers; their comfortable two-goal lead evaporating in the dying moments when Watford’s Troy Deeney equalised from the spot, before it was the Wolves fans hiding their faces as Gerard Deulofeo scored his second and Watford’s third in extra-time to book his team’s trip to Wembley.

Or rather, trip back to Wembley, as it is, because they were already there. Which is kind of my whole point.

As a rule, Wembley doesn’t really do good semi-finals. Sunday’s stood out because it was a stand-out amongst many drab, instantly forgettable games that once were one of the highlights of the footballing calendar.

We don’t have to go back too far to find one of those. Twenty-four hours earlier, Manchester City and Brighton had played the first of this season’s semi-finals in front of 71,521 fans. City, with their eyes on prizes on four fronts sent thousands of tickets back (the ones that Raheem Sterling didn’t buy, anyway) but their fans will be back in the capital this Tuesday to play Spurs in the Champions League and if they are honest, they knew they’d have a chance to go to Wembley again for the FA Cup final.

The Watford versus Wolves match wasn’t a sell-out either, with just over 80,000 there. It’s still an impressive attendance but put into perspective, the Checkatrade Trophy Final had five thousand more fans than that a week earlier, and that third and fourth tier competition has been much derided since it let Premier League U-23 teams in.

But volume of fans aside for a moment, for me, a semi-final is all about being one step from the hallowed turf. A place there on Cup Final Day should have to be earned the hard way; two teams going toe-to-toe in a winner-takes-all contest where one team leaves heartbroken – so close yet so far – and the other dances around in the joy of knowing they have made it. One set of coaches drive into the early evening traffic euphoric, the other leave with their heads down wondering what might have been.

And it should definitely ‘might have been somewhere’ at some place other than Wembley. That’s arguably more of a prize (for fans anyway) than the cup itself. It’s part of what made the FA Cup so special and playing these games at the same venue as the final is part of why it’s lost so much of its sparkle.

Not even under the spell of nostalgia would I try to argue that semi-finals were better games when they weren’t at Wembley. That would be bending the facts and rewriting history. Many semi-finals are anything but classics. It’s part of the charm; too tense, too much riding on them, too much to lose (i.e. not going to Wembley). Often they were dramatic, but down to unforgettable moments rather than unforgettable matches.

Until yesterday, Wembley – for semi-final – had seen hardly any of either in eleven years.

My first memory of a semi-final was 1981. A year earlier, Liverpool and Arsenal had played out a marathon four games to decide the winner (imagine that today – they’d have to extend the season to July) but I was a little too young and in any case, the games weren’t televised. If you wanted to see them, it was via Match of the Day if you didn’t have a ticket.

I listened on a transistor radio whilst standing behind the goal at my local non-league club as two aforementioned clubs, Wolves and Spurs met at Hillsborough and on this occasion, it was the team from the West Midlands that scored a dramatic penalty late in the game to make it 2-2 and send it to extra-time, and eventually a replay.

Classics were few and far between after that. The exceptions being possibly Manchester United and Liverpool drawing (2-2 again) in 1985 and Coventry overcoming Leeds in a five-goal thriller two years later, before the semi-final day to end all semi-final days in 1990.

By then, games on a Sunday and televised live were commonplace. After the appalling tragedy at the Hillsborough semi-final a year earlier, the two games on that after particular afternoon stayed in the memory for the right reasons, as Crystal Palace defeated Liverpool 4-3 at Villa Park, and then Manchester United and Oldham shared six goals at Maine Road.

A year later in ’91, there was a unique problem. For the first time, Spurs and Arsenal were drawn to face each other in the last four and Wembley was used as a ‘one-off’ semi-final venue as Gazza beat David Seaman from something like sixty yards with a free kick (exposing a weakness in the pony-tailed one’s shot saving from that kind of distance that would forever haunt him).

Two years later, the same North London teams met again. This time, if they were using Wembley then so was everyone, so the whole of Sheffield came down too as Wednesday pipped United on the previous day. Then twelve months later, Manchester United and Oldham met (and drew before going back to Manchester to settle it there!) a day after Chelsea beat Luton. It had certainly started something.

After the dramatic finish to the Villa Park replay when Ryan Giggs’s solo goal kept Manchester United treble-bound in 1999, it should have told those in doubt to stay away until the final, but no, in 2000, Aston Villa, Newcastle and Bolton fans all made the trip (and none of them even scored a goal) to the soon-to-be-bulldozed national stadium, along with Chelsea. With Wembley then out of bounds, Villa Park and Old Trafford took over duties (along with, for one year, Cardiff’s Millennium Stadium, which was the venue for the final too until 2006).

In 2008, with the new Wembley in full-working order, it was announced that both semi-finals of the FA Cup would be played there every year. With the FA wanting to recoup some of their enormous outlay, this was an obvious way to make extra cash. The argument was that more fans got to go with it being held there (aka more money is made from tickets) but that misses some fundamental points.

There are the practical ones, such as cost (not insignificant when two teams from the North are paired together) and accessibility; kick-off times making it painful for fans to get home (additionally painful if they’d lost) if they had to travel the length of the country.

But the real kick in the teeth was an emotional one. I truly believe that, in the FA Cup’s case, the venue is the prize as much as the silverware, if not more. The thrill comes from the journey – they don’t call it the Road to Wembley for nothing – and getting to go there means so much to supporters. I can’t therefore agree with Chris Bascombe’s article on Monday (in the Telegraph) that put the blame at the stadium’s door. Sure, it’s a little older now, and doesn’t stand up too well when compared to the new one Spur’s have just opened for instance, but it’s Wembley. It still means something to get there; just as it did when it was a run-down relic you could see from miles away with its crumbling twin towers and a massive car park.

It was also the pinnacle of a team’s ambition, now already too watered down by playing so many non-final matches there including Premier League ones (yes, I know that was almost unavoidable) as well as the fact that the Cup plays third fiddle at best in the trophy pecking order.

But it still can be special. The FA Cup needs more than an exciting game on Sunday to reverse its steady decline and moving the semi-finals back to neutral venues around the country – equidistance or as near as between the two clubs – would be a massive step in the right direction.

Absence makes the heart grow fonder. Even England have realized this and taken a few friendly matches back on the road, as well as the upcoming Euro 2020 qualifier against Kosovo.

It’s not as if we are struggling for alternatives.

Where once, Villa Park was the next best option to Old Trafford, we now have a number of stadiums that would be perfect including Anfield, the Etihad, St James Park, The Principality Stadium and The Emirates, as well as Spurs of course. There is a venue for any eventuality and OK, a few less fans might have a chance of getting a ticket, but that’ll just add to the jeopardy and create an extra edge of wanting to win so badly to get one for the final.

Surely that’s better than empty seats at the games and an even emptier ‘haven’t we been here before?’ feeling as the teams line up for the national anthem in May.

Maybe I’m alone in this. But while I’m pretty sure that a lot of fans of the Manchester clubs, Liverpool, Chelsea, Arsenal and certainly Spurs, see Wembley as just another stadium these days, for clubs like Watford who last went to an FA Cup Final in 1984, Brighton (1983) and Wolves (1960) then getting to another would be so much more meaningful if they hadn’t already played the game before there too.

Let’s reverse the trend now before anyone gets the bright idea to play the quarter-finals there too.

Ironically, as Wembley gets increasingly harder to find amongst the growing number of tall buildings sprouting up around the stadium, actually reaching the famous ‘home of football’ has never been easier.

Let’s not let the rare entertainment of Sunday’s game mask the issue.

See what I did there?

words Darren Young, D3D4 columnist