Hi I’m an American and recently the NBA added a in-season tournament fairly similar to the EFL cup and FA trophy. So I’m short I was wondering how important these trophy’s are to football fans? Like is winning the FA cup similar to winning the league? Nobody is very excited about the in-season tourney so I was just wondering if everyone share this sentiment.
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It depends on the club and depends on the Cup.
back in the 90’s and early 2000’s the tops clubs did everything in their powers to fall out of the league cup ASAP. They usually did this by fielding an extremely weak team of youth players, reserves or bench players.
Wenger’s Arsenal made this obvious because they usually bowed out of the league cup in the first round.
If you are a top club its just not sustainable to play in 3 or 4 comps with a 25 man roster.
with that said, lower teams will make a run at the League Cup because it is a chance of silver wear and a place in Europe.
But all teams usually make an effort to advance in the FA CUP.
The beauty of the FA cup is that in theory my local town’s team could win it. I guess you’d need a tournament including the basketball teams from all the high schools, colleges, universities and NBA.
Winning either cup allows a club the chance to play in Europe via the Europa League for the FA Cup, and Conference League for the League Cup.
No English treble is complete without an fa cup. You can win a carabou cup, but it’s not as important in my eyes.
Four things that matter imo to make a good tournament:
- History: Hard to build and typically relies on other factors to have carried the tournament through. But by the time anything hits 50+ years of running there is a certain prestige gained.
- Prize Money: Pretty self explanatory, but if the money is there, the teams will compete
- Upsets: If the results are often fairly predictable, a tournament will struggle to succeed. I think for the NBA this will have to be the big thing they need to get right in this set up, otherwise it will fail
- Bragging Rights: This one is harder to quantify as it kind of comes down to the fans, but if it feels like something you can brag about winning, then people will brag about winning and make others want to take it off them
Fa cup is part of the real treble not “mourinhos treble”
The FA Cup is an open tournament that includes every division in the country, from the Premier League down the semi-pros. It gives smaller teams the opportunity to make pretty staggering amounts of money and can give them an opportunity to grow.
The NBA in-season tournament only has NBA teams, it would be closer to the League Cup which is Premier League teams only and without promotion/relegation it’s pretty much just an exhibition tournament