Cup runneth over? Not really
I need your help with this one. On Wednesday, I stumbled onto a football message board where some jaded cynic was gloating about how Arsenal's latest multi-million-pound signing had just sunk his own team on his debut.
As I'm mildly interested in all things Arsenal, because we sort of swapped goalkeepers, I hurried towards the ever-reliable Soccernet site in order to check the new standings in the Premiership.
But lo and behold! Nothing had changed since my last visit. Being no dummy in these matters, I shrewdly concluded Arsenal must have lost a cup game and went looking for the match report.
When I finally found it, I was in for the next surprise: the Gunners had been beaten 2-1 by Middlesbrough. The same Middlesbrough they had defeated 4-1 only last week or so in, well, the 'Cup', as far as I'm concerned. The same Middlesbrough they had then lost 1-0 to in, er, the 'Cup' a few days later.
However, the match report informed me Arsenal had now been eliminated from the Carling Cup. How intriguing. Boro, winners of the Anglo-Scottish Cup in 1976 and runners-up in the Zenith Data Systems Cup in 1990 had now progressed to the final of the Carling Cup. (I mean, it is the final... or isn't it?) Which used to be the Milk Cup and the Coca-Cola Cup and the Worthington Cup. Or did it?
Anyway, it's not the FA Cup, which may or may not be called the Axa Cup by now, because that's where Arsenal beat Boro. Right? If I'm more or less spot on so far, then what is the Auto Windscreens Shield?
I'm sorry, but you have to bear with me. I'm German. While Arsenal lost to Boro in... whatever, we had a great Cup night of our own.
Second-division Lübeck won away at third-division Hoffenheim to reach the semis for the first time in their history. And with 90 minutes well and truly up, second-division Duisburg led 2-1 at Gladbach, second-division Fürth were 2-1 ahead against a Bremen side down to ten men.
But then, in injury time, Tomislav Maric equalised for Gladbach, who went on to win on penalties. It was Maric's first game for the club. And Bremen scored twice within 45 seconds to come out 3-2 winners.
That was exciting stuff, but primarily a pity. Because a day later, second-division Alemannia Aachen beat Bayern Munich thanks to a late header from former Liverpool player Erik Meijer, who then dedicated the goal to his seriously ill father, a tear in his eye.
Yet as straightforward and as exciting as this competition is, we don't really care that much. Which is not unusual on the continent, where pretty few, if any, countries are as obsessed with cup football as the English are. Still, Germany is a peculiar case regardless.
The Spanish, the Italians or the French may not lose much sleep over who wins their Cup, but some sort of cup competion does have a special place in the history of their domestic games.
Between 1902 and 1928, the winner of the Copa del Rey was the Spanish champion, only then did Spain come up with a league system. The first Italian title-holders were also determined through simple knock-out rounds (from 1898 to 1905), and the same goes for the French, who admittedly switched to league football pretty damn early (in 1895).
Yet Germans have always felt that a cup system is much to easy. You travel, you play, you're out or you progress. Where's the point? You form or join a club because that means there's lots of stuff that has to be properly organised, right?
And why would you then come up with a competition that demands less organisation, less pre-planning and less record-keeping than a fine, complicated league?
As early as 1891, there was a league in Berlin, and its member clubs, believe it or not, were so fascinated with how wonderfully complicated a simple game can become that they introduced a system that made the officials, raher than the players, the most important people: Teams could gain 'points' during a game by winning corners (five points) or throw-ins (three points).
Twenty of such points then counted as one goal. In other words: If you lost 1-0 but had four corners to your credit, the scoreline was actually 1-1. There was a lot of scribbling down going on at the sidelines, I guess.
Another reason why a true cup competition didn't really get off the ground was that, contrary to popular opinion, local patriotism is and was much stronger in Germany than nationalism.
There were many, many regional associations, and each was much more interested in their own little, derby-infested and hot-bloodly contested league than what the other associations were doing. Those silly and strange Bavarians, Westphalians, Saxons, Franconians, Rhinelanders, Hessians, Frisians... They can't play anyway, you know. (The German FA was formed as early as 1900, but it was never the central, ruling body it thought it would be until the 1960s, when the Bundesliga was finally established, after the regional associations had successfully fought that for more than half a century.)
| “ | The DFB-Pokal only came into being in 1935, a brainchild of those purveyors of true sporting spirit, the Nazis. ” | |
The Cup did acquire some glamour and honour in the 1960s, because of the introduction of the Cup Winners' Cup, but there have been few moments people really remember. The 1973 final between Gladbach and Cologne was one of the best matches this country has ever seen, and there were two unforgettable days in early May of 1984: In the first semifinal, Gladbach won 5-4 against Bremen, who had trailed 3-1, then led 4-3. Twenty-four hours later, Schalke and Bayern scored twelve goals in 120 minutes. (It was 6-6. Bayern won the replay 3-2.)
But by and large the Cup winners tend to get forgotten soon.
You object? OK, then. Schwarz-Weiss Essen, SpVgg Fürth, Karlsruher SC, Kickers Offenbach. Which of these clubs has never won the Cup?
