Snobbery takes many forms. One of its more subtle manifestations is the way in which a certain type of football fan places European football on a pedestal while adopting a slightly patronising attitude to most domestic competition.
This is a tribe whose horror of “parochialism” is so pronounced they wear their frequent inability to place famous English football grounds such as Valley Parade on blank maps of Britain almost as badges of honour.
As subscribers to the view that even the most tedious Champions League group game automatically trumps the FA Cup, they will doubtless be a little puzzled by Steve Clarke’s outburst.
Reading’s manager is upset about the Uefa rule that decrees domestic cup ties cannot be played on the same nights as continental fixtures and he has a persuasive argument.
A European midweek fixture list featuring Monaco against Arsenal and Manchester City at Barcelona next Tuesday and Wednesday respectively, dictates Bradford City and Reading must replay this quarter-final a week next Monday night.
“I think the Football Association are devaluing their competition a little bit by making both teams play on Saturday, then Monday,” said Clarke, whose side have a tough Championship trip to Watford 48 hours before the rematch while Bradford are in League One action on the same afternoon when they travel to Notts County.
“Why don’t we just replay on the Tuesday or the Wednesday – what are Uefa going to do?” added Reading’s manager. “I love the FA Cup and everything it stands for. Bradford’s run to this point has been amazing and all that romance is there but the FA choose to make both teams play on a Monday. That’s the one disappointment.”
If the chances of the FA standing up to Uefa seem considerably slimmer than either of these sides giantkilling their way to Wembley, the replay promises to be much more intriguing than Arsenal’s attempt to redeem themselves in Monaco.
It is certainly hard to imagine the atmosphere at Stade Louis II on 17 March matching that at Saturday’s unseasonably warm and sunny Valley Parade, where a crowd in excess of 24,000 willed Phil Parkinson’s players to consign Reading to the same fate as Chelsea and Sunderland.
Although 4,500 fans had travelled north from Berkshire they were largely drowned out by the hugely vociferous claret-and-amber clad majority at one of England’s most evocative arenas.
If there would be something fitting about Parkinson’s team reaching the final in the month that marks the 30th anniversary of the Bradford fire disaster, only the bravest of gamblers would stake much on predicting the eventual semi-finalist.
While Pavel Pogrebnyak and Oliver Norwood grazed the woodwork for Reading, Gary Liddle also hit a post for Bradford, who enjoyed the better of a second half featuring Alex Pearce, Clarke’s captain, stripping down to his underpants after an accidental, 87th-minute collision with François Zoko left him with a broken nose, Pearce declined to retreat to the touchline. While one physiotherapist straightened the nose, another removed the blood that had cascaded out of it by hosing down the near naked defender with bottled water.
“It would have been easy for Alex to go off the pitch,” Clarke said. “But his attitude was wipe the blood away, straighten the nose and get on with it – he’s a proper centre-half.”
Pearce’s demeanour was entirely in keeping with the occasion. If quality was a little lacking at times – combined with a playing surface poor enough to shame some parks teams, Clarke’s decision to field an extra man in midfield stifled Bradford’s customary scope for creative manoeuvre – the spirit in which the game was played could hardly have been bettered anywhere.
At times the challenges were not so much clattering as positively wince inducing but there was no complaining to the referee, no faking of injuries, no pretending to have been insulted and no time-wasting. In short there was none of the petulant posturing that all too often blemishes even the very best European fixtures.
“It was a physical, evenly matched game with no quarter asked, no quarter given and both teams just looking for that lucky bounce of the ball,” Clarke said. His Bradford counterpart did not demur. “Both teams put in real honest performances,”Parkinson said. “There were some tremendous challenges. You have to praise the honesty of both sets of players.”
A little later the home manager could be found sipping beer from the bottle while chatting with a small group of Bradford fans in a passage off the main stand. The sense of unity seemed thoroughly emblematic of an unfailingly friendly club that had gone to the bother of baking trays of cakes decorated with mini claret-and-amber scarves for the media.
It is the sort of ambience that bolstered Bradford’s run to the 2013 League Cup final and explained why Parkinson was disappointed not to have proceeded directly to the team’s first FA Cup semi-final since 1911.
Even so, part of him will relish a return to a former habitat where he remains a cult hero. Acknowledged as one of Reading’s best central midfielders of all time, Bradford’s manager can expect a particularly warm reception. “I’ll enjoy going back,” he said. “Although when I went down to watch them against Wigan their pitch was almost as bad as ours.”
By then he had already challenged the replay’s timing. “When I learnt it would be on a Monday I questioned it,” Parkinson said. “I was told it’s ‘the rules’ … but it’s certainly not ideal.”
Man of the match Stephen Darby (Bradford City)
