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With any luck, the FFA Cup will one day replicate the sort of drama we saw at Wembley Stadium on Sunday morning. Few sporting events can match the drama of a thrill-a-minute cup final.
There’s no polite way to put this, but Hull City butchered their chance to win a first major trophy in their long history.
If ever the mantra that you can score your goals too early was true, it was amply demonstrated as Hull went 2-0 up inside 10 minutes against a shell-shocked Arsenal at Wembley.
Never mind that around three-quarters of the ground seemed to be wearing red, it was the Hull fans singing early after James Chester and Curtis Davies had put them two goals to the good within eight minutes.
The stage was set for a dramatic cup upset, but Santi Cazorla’s 17th-minute free-kick was arguably the goal that changed the complexion of the match.
It gave Arsenal more than 70 minutes to try and find an equaliser – they did exactly that through Laurent Koscielny in the 71st minute – and it also meant Hull goalkeeper Allan McGregor would endure a nervy encounter after he was beaten from miles out by the Spaniard.
Sure enough, it was the Gunners who prevailed in extra-time as Aaron Ramsey slammed home a superbly-worked team goal to end Arsene Wenger’s seemingly interminable trophy drought.
Whether it’s a good thing for Wenger to stay on as Arsenal manager is open to debate, but what is certain is that Australia’s own FFA Cup would do well to match the intensity of the English version.
The same can be said of the German Cup, where Bayern Munich wrapped up the double with a thrilling 2-0 extra-time win over Borussia Dortmund.
The Bavarians may be one of the best sides on the planet, but they got lucky when Dortmund defender Mats Hummels had a legitimate goal ignored, after Bayern stopper Dante hooked his header off the line on the hour mark.
Earlier this season Bundesliga clubs voted against introducing goal-line technology – although both Bayern and Dortmund were both in favour of using it – and the Ruhr Valley giants must be rueing its absence after Hummels’ phantom goal was overlooked.
The game eventually went into extra-time, and it was here that Dortmund’s day turned for the worse – no thanks to the contribution of their 33-year-old goalkeeper Roman Weidenfeller.
A strange selection for Germany’s World Cup squad, Weidenfeller committed a monumental blunder when his quick throw from goal caught his teammates napping, allowing Jerome Boateng to cross for Arjen Robben to side-foot home the opener.
Dortmund predictably pushed everyone forward thereafter, and they were ultimately caught short on the counter-attack in stoppage-time as Thomas Müller sealed a 2-0 win for Pep Guardiola’s side.
It all happened in front of a sold-out crowd of more than 76,000 at the Olympic Stadium in Berlin, and that’s on top of mid-week semi-final crowds of over 80,000 in Dortmund and a sell-out 71,000 attendance at the Allianz Arena for second division Kaiserslautern’s visit earlier in the campaign.
The romance of the Cup may have dwindled somewhat, but it’s still big business in plenty of European countries.
That’s what Football Federation Australia officials will be hoping to mirror one day, and already the various state knock-out competitions have thrown up some fascinating pre-FFA Cup qualifying clashes.
Former National Soccer League heavyweights Sydney Olympic and Sydney United go head to head in a mouth-watering Waratah Cup quarter-final, their Melbourne counterparts South Melbourne and Melbourne Knights have both reached the Dockerty Cup sixth round, while Adelaide City and West Adelaide meet in the South Australian knock-out final for a place in the 2014 FFA Cup.
There are still plenty of unanswered questions about how the FFA Cup will ultimately unfold.
But for now, there’s every reason to dream that one day we too could have our very own cup-final drama.