Sunday, January 4, 2009

Conspiracy Theories

In light of today's FA cup draw, I have come to believe the English FA and UEFA rig both the FA Cup and Champions League draws, to a certain extent.
Let's examine the big four FA cup draws.
Liverpool v. Everton
Manchester United v. Tottenham 
Arsenal v. Cardiff City
(probably) Chelsea v. Ipswich Town

Liverpool v. Everton: What are the chances that perhaps one of the biggest BPL rivalries was picked, taking into account there are 32 teams still remaining? Ticket sales perhaps? And not to be outdone, Manchester United get a heavyweight pick too--after all, the FA cannot leave their most profitable team playing league two sides each round. That doesn't draw a crowd. 

Arsenal v. Cardiff City is an interesting one. As Arsenal are known to field substitutes/reserve players for these cups, we can assume it's Aaron Ramsey's homecoming--and hey! They happen to be playing in Cardiff! All Ramsey's former supporters can now boo him.

Now Chelsea is a different story. The club is notorious for often getting easier draws in these cup competitions. I don't know if it's the Russian blood money or the threat of Russian oil magnates spilling blood, but it seems to get Chelsea further in these cups.

Now onto the Champions League draw.
Chelsea v. Juventus: Ranieri gets to go back to his old club, where he failed to win them a Champions League trophy. Oh the drama. If only Inter had been matched up with Chelsea (which would have been impossible because of their group placings). Watch out for this in the quarter finals. (Abromavich's 'influence' doesn't extend to the more lucrative CL of course--they'd make more money from the advertising for a big game)
Instead, Inter get Manchester United: Fergie can rekindle his affair with Mourinho! It's also a gigantic match.

Arsenal get Roma--why are there so many Italian teams playing English teams? I just hope no one gets stabbed.
The Spanish heavy Liverpool get to face Real Madrid. And both are traditional European heavyweights. This will be a field day for the media (especially the Spanish one).

Barcelona get an easy draw because they need to reach the final.
And of course, all the lower league teams can go eliminate each other. We wouldn't want any upsets yet--for the TV rating's sake. 

Why hadn't this been revealed earlier? UEFA and the FA have only recently been whoring themselves out for Euros because of the global economic crisis. 

This is, of course, all true. Time for me to write the wikipedia article before I am kidnapped by Michel Platini and Eric Cantona (the real mastermind behind the FA).

2 comments:

  1. There are many small connections to be made between many teams. If Arsenal had drawn Derby, I could have claimed it was because the FA wanted Arsenal to advance, and it would eliminate Nacer Barazite from contention seeing as Arsenal is the parent club. Conspiracy!!!

    At least as the Champions League draw is concerned, your conspiracy theory can be explained by the fact that there are only so many world class managers and players out there, and they go on a marry-go-round of the top teams. Consequently there will always be an X-player of the other team, or an X-manager on hand. Really, just a likely coincidence more than a conspiracy imo.

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