FA Cup Final 2020: Facts and stats from the competition
- Published
The FA Cup is officially the world’s oldest football competition. The first games were played in November 1871, that's 149 years ago! When Chelsea take on Arsenal at Wembley stadium it will be the 139th FA Cup final. Taking place on the 1 August, this year's final is the latest a final has ever been held in the competition's history.
Arsenal are appearing in their 21st FA Cup final, more than any other team. They've won the competition a record 13 times too, winning their last six FA Cup final appearances. Lucky number seven in 2020?
Chelsea have won seven of their last nine FA Cup finals, with both defeats in that time coming against Arsenal. No teams have met in the final more than Chelsea and Arsenal, who have now met three times.
So far there have only been two players who have represented both clubs in the same FA Cup final fixture. Francis Birley played for Oxford University against Wanderers in 1873, and vice versa in 1877, while Jack Reynolds played for both Aston Villa and West Bromwich Albion in FA Cup finals between the two sides in the 1890s. Both Chelsea’s Olivier Giroud and Arsenal’s David Luiz could be added to this list, having played for the opposite teams in the 2017 final.
Olivier Giroud has played in four FA Cup finals, scored in one and won them all. Winning the competition three times with Arsenal in '14, '15 and 2017 and once with Chelsea in 2018. Giroud will be aiming to become the first player to score for and against Arsenal in separate FA Cup finals.
This will be the first FA Cup final since 2012 where the two managers also played for their teams in an FA Cup final. Mikel Arteta won with Arsenal in 2014, while Frank Lampard played in five finals for the Chelsea, winning four. Indeed, Lampard’s only FA Cup final defeat - you guessed it- came against Arsenal in 2002. Arteta could become the first person to win the FA Cup with Arsenal as both a captain and a manager.
Frank Lampard will be the first English manager to take charge of Chelsea in a major cup final since Glenn Hoddle in the 1994 FA Cup, a 0-4 defeat against Manchester United. The last English manager to win a major trophy with Chelsea was Dave Sexton in the final of the 1971 Cup Winners Cup and that trophy doesn't even exist anymore!
When it comes to teams playing in the top tier of English football, be that Division 1 or the Premier League, 75 out of 119 FA Cup finals have been won by a team that finished outside of the top four.
This will be the third time in the last four years that Arsenal will be ending their season against Chelsea, winning the 2017 FA Cup final and losing last season’s Europa League final against the Blues in Baku. But with a history that's nearly a 150 years old, the FA Cup is much more than just the 2020 final!
The FA Cup is now quite well known for having coloured ribbons of the previous winner attached to it, but did you know that on the day of the final the Cup is decorated at the start of the game with ribbons in the colours of both the teams playing. The loser’s ribbons are then removed at the final whistle.
The first FA Cup final wasn't held at Wembley, instead the Kennington Oval in London was used on the 16th March 1872. The Oval is now more famous for being a cricket ground where the England cricket team often play. The Royal Engineers team, from Kent, in the picture played in the first final and lost 1-0 to the Wanderers, from south London.
Portsmouth hold the record for the most years in possession of the FA cup - they had it sitting in the trophy cabinet for a whopping seven years in a row. Unfortunately for Portsmouth fans they didn't win it 7 times back to back. They were, in fact, the last team to win the cup before World War II broke out and the competition was postponed for 7 years. Despite the coronavirus pandemic this year's competition hasn't been cancelled, it's just being played much later than normal and in empty stadiums.
- Published27 July 2020
- Published30 May 2019
