I felt lucky that I was at home on Sunday. For all kinds of reasons. Fortunately to witness the drama of a FA Cup gigantic dead. Fortunately to feel the passion of a crowd in a club that still appreciates their own fans more than tourists and newspapers.
Fortunately to be in a club that is a pride of their own regional identity. Fortunately to be in the beautiful Mayflower stand with its echoes of history. Fortunately to see what a result such as the victory of Plymouth Argyle over Liverpool means for a local community.
Fortunately to experience a day that lit the best of our game. Fortunately to feel the kind of emotions that are an integral part of a football match that, despite the efforts of the elite, simply refuses to die.
Sometimes it can feel as if the FA Cup represents a disappearing world, a final remnant of tradition in a sport whose broadcasters pretend it started in 1992 and whose money makers see lucrative opportunities elsewhere.
Sometimes it feels like the competition is constantly being devalued and not respected. Managers pay lipservice to his magic because they know that it will not play well if they do not, but actions speak louder than words.
Arne Slot released his first team on Sunday. He even recorded none of them in the team traveling to the Westland. He chose a second string team for the FA Cup because Liverpool has five games in 15 days from Wednesday and has greater priorities.
So when I listened to BBC Radio 5 live on the ride home from Plymouth, I coordinated on the telephone-in Robbie Savage and Chris Sutton-Gastheer and heard savage talking to a Plymouth fan. “Congratulations on beating Liverpool's reserves,” he said.
And he was right. Plymouth had defeated Mighty Liverpool, but it was not the best Liverpool available. And that is not the fault of Slot. His priorities are the Premier League and the Champions League. His players have a crazy schedule and have to give something. And something, more often than not, is the FA Cup.
Some thought that Liverpool's 1-0 defeat in Home Park might be a disguised blessing for Slot and his team. Liverpool has larger fish for roasting and fighting on one front, will give tired players the chance to recover while they are haunting more radiant prices.
It fits in a context in which the traditions of the tournament are eroded. UEFA has founded a European Super League through Stealth in the form of the ever-increasing Champions League and our Elite clubs are dedicated to a calendar that tries to squeeze life out of everything else.
The FA Cup is still a showcase for the best that our game has to offer, but the FA itself betray it through degrees and the Premier League, who see threats everywhere for their greed, try to kill it. When the chairman of Crystal Palace Steve Parish spoke about a fight between supermarkets and corner shops, it was the voice of the elite.
Both the FA and the Premier League will of course deny that, but the facts tell a different story. The abolition of the repetitions, their distribution of competitions in the fourth round for five days and their relocation of the FA Cup final to the penultimate weekend of the season are all betrayal.
And yet despite all this, despite the betrayal and the weakness and the compromises and the cowardice of the people who run the game, the FA Cup continues to brave them because it keeps thriving.
That was the other that was so nice to be home in Home Park on Sunday. It was to realize that everything that those who have no contact do with the English game do, no matter how blind them have become, have English football fans too much from the FA Cup to let it wilt.
The result still played to our love for the Underdog. It was still a black eye for the giants. Something was still in the opportunity that came to the core of the attraction of the cup: those ordinary players of clubs with a lower league with uplifting stories and lives that almost look like yours and mine can fight with the gilt elite and sometimes Can they be able to come at the top.
Of course Liverpool played a second team in Plymouth, so the gigantic killing was not entirely the same as in the days that Hereford Newcastle United and Wimbledon held a Leeds United team with Peter Lorimer, Billy Bremner, Johnny Giles, Paul Madeley and the rest of Don Revie's first choice selection.
And perhaps some of the fans in Home Park were disappointed not to see Mohamed Salah and Virgil van Dijk rise in Liverpool colors. But that disappointment went when the last whistle blew and when it was written in the record books that their Liverpool team had defeated.
That is why the Premier League and UEFA will find it difficult to kill the FA Cup. Because the competition is the core of what we like about football and it is the core of what gives English football its unique sales argument.
The elite thinks that our unique sales argument is the Premier League, but it is not. What makes English football special is the pyramid system. It is the depth of our competition, the fact that eight clubs in our fourth layer have this season, has average crowds of more than 7,000.
In the third level, two clubs have on average more than 20,000 for their home. Five on average more than 10,000. That is in League One. The Premier League disease is that they see that as competition, not as a brotherhood of football.
The beauty of our competition is in the combination of the powerful, legendary clubs such as Manchester United and Liverpool and Arsenal and the local teams such as Plymouth and Stockport County and Carlisle United and Grimsby Town.
Most football fans in this country know that. They love their own team, but at a certain level they love what our game stands for. The best of it is in the FA Cup and the people who only measure things in money will not be able to kill it, no matter how hard they try.
It looks more like Mission Impossible at United!
I don't think I have the will to try to keep track of the different missions and projects from Old Trafford now that the influence of Sir Dave Brailsford is growing in Manchester United.
Until now, the only tangible effect of Mission 1, which is based on the United women's team that wins the WSL for the first time, is to bring Alan Brazil to the edge of a hernia live on talks.
Mission 21, you will be surprised to know, revolves around the ambition of the men's team that wins another Premier League title. Nobody had ever thought of it before Sir Dave came by. That is Blue-Sky thinking for you.
Brailsford has helped awkwardly to be united to 13th place in the table, closer to the bottom three than the top four. So maybe we all misunderstand what the mission statement is. Perhaps Mission 21 means that Sir Dave undertakes to win the following title before the end of this century.
Rasmus Hojlund may even have scored another goal.
Old Trafford will not miss Sancho
When Marcus Rashford Manchester United left loan for Aston Villa and made his debut on Sunday, Jadon Sancho posted a message from one word on Rashford's Instagram-Feed. There was simple: “Freedom.”
Since Sancho, who is on loan in Chelsea, is still a united player, it is hardly surprising that some supporters at Old Trafford are less than impressed by his posture.
They have paid the wages of the player on and off for very little in exchange for the past three years.
Liberation works both sides. I suspect they will be happy to be shot from Sancho when Chelsea makes his move permanent in the summer.
Nothing goes beyond sport
I was in Twickenham on Saturday for the astonishing last victory of England in France and the best player in the world, Antoine Dupont.
On Sunday morning I drove to the West Country to witness Plymouth's FA Cup gigantic dead of Liverpool and enjoy the rich culture of English football.
On Tuesday I will be in Manchester to see Manchester City de Real Madrid of Vinicius JR, Federico Valverde and Jude Bellingham. And on Wednesday I will say what can say goodbye to me against one of the big cathedrals of our game, Goodison Park, when Everton Liverpool is hosted in the Merseyside Derby.
Very, very occasionally, I may have to be remembered how happy I am to work in something like fascinating and rich and unpredictable and inspiring as the sports world, but it doesn't happen often.
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