Cup Final day used to be almost ridiculously big. It got wall-to-wall coverage from morning till you sat down for your tea with the stentorian tones of BBC News volume-controlled in the background.
Now it's desultory, a second-rate presentation of a competition completely overshadowed by former players' nostalgia.
No moment spoke more loudly than the post-match interview with Youri Tielemans. It was I think conducted by that daft girl who ruins the EFL for Final Score every other week, whose voice is that of a cat, strangulated by excitement at the long-delayed opening of a tin of Whiskas. Youri Tielemans is Belgian. He turns out to be as fluent in English as he is at shooting from outside the box. In possibly his third language he was forced to conjure interesting replies to the same question, tweaked only slightly with only minimal use of vocabulary, squawked at him five times by a broadcaster, whose future surely lies in a return to print media asap. He was brilliant. She was embarrassing. We found out How He Felt! He has a bright future in broadcasting when he can no longer shoot.
The game certainly gave pause for thought, when all we hear is about the array of talent available for England in the upchucking Euros, that by a country mile the best two players on view were Tielemans, who certainly wouldn't be rated Belgium's best and the superb Fofana who is struggling for a place in France's U-21 line-up.
The afternoon was topped off by Gary Lineker's assertion that Schmeichel is the best keeper in the Premier League. Yeah Gary and I'm a zebra. Comparing his save from Mason Mount with Jimmy Montgomery's famous effort, or Banks from Pele, will have National League keepers shaking their heads and thinking, "I'd have stopped that!" It was a really good save. FULL STOP.
Or maybe you loved it all?
Now it's desultory, a second-rate presentation of a competition completely overshadowed by former players' nostalgia.
No moment spoke more loudly than the post-match interview with Youri Tielemans. It was I think conducted by that daft girl who ruins the EFL for Final Score every other week, whose voice is that of a cat, strangulated by excitement at the long-delayed opening of a tin of Whiskas. Youri Tielemans is Belgian. He turns out to be as fluent in English as he is at shooting from outside the box. In possibly his third language he was forced to conjure interesting replies to the same question, tweaked only slightly with only minimal use of vocabulary, squawked at him five times by a broadcaster, whose future surely lies in a return to print media asap. He was brilliant. She was embarrassing. We found out How He Felt! He has a bright future in broadcasting when he can no longer shoot.
The game certainly gave pause for thought, when all we hear is about the array of talent available for England in the upchucking Euros, that by a country mile the best two players on view were Tielemans, who certainly wouldn't be rated Belgium's best and the superb Fofana who is struggling for a place in France's U-21 line-up.
The afternoon was topped off by Gary Lineker's assertion that Schmeichel is the best keeper in the Premier League. Yeah Gary and I'm a zebra. Comparing his save from Mason Mount with Jimmy Montgomery's famous effort, or Banks from Pele, will have National League keepers shaking their heads and thinking, "I'd have stopped that!" It was a really good save. FULL STOP.
Or maybe you loved it all?