For the first time ever there will be a Manchester derby in the FA Cup final after Manchester United beat Brighton on penalties in Sunday’s semifinal. United’s form may have been patchy of late and there were times at Wembley when it was clinging on, but it has the chance of completing a domestic double in the final on June 3. Perhaps more importantly, it can also deny Manchester City a treble.
United, having gone out of the Europa League with a limp defeat away to Sevilla on Thursday, looked just as weary as it has generally in recent weeks. Without three first-choice central defenders through injury or suspension, its setup was understandably cautious, and yet it still conceded chances regularly to a Brighton side that, enterprising as it was, was perhaps not quite at the heights it has hit at times this season.
A patchwork squad, pieced together under a procession of managers with little guiding principle, has Erik ten Hag having to compromise his possession-football principles. It’s fair to say he would prefer a goalkeeper who was more accomplished with the ball at his feet, but de Gea, as he has repeatedly this season, bailed United out with a couple of excellent saves.
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Equally Aaron Wan-Bissaka is probably a more defensive, less technical fullback than ten Hag would ideally field, but his ability in one-on-one battles was key to holding Brighton at arm’s length as he did as good a job of neutralizing Kaoru Mitoma as anybody has this season. It was neither pretty nor convincing and United had just 40% possession, but it held out and then won on penalties, scoring seven straight to take advantage of Solly March’s miss.
Brighton will think of what might have been: the Alexis Mac Allister free kick that de Gea pushed wide early on, the second half-snapshot from Julio Enciso that de Gea tipped over, the close-range header that Danny Welbeck put over. Perhaps if Evan Ferguson had not been injured, it would have been a different story. Those details are what cost it a place in the final, but they should not detract from what an extraordinary season this has been for the club.
United has already won the League Cup this season but, after the Europa League exit, it probably needed this win to reinforce the sense that progress is being made under ten Hag. And preventing City emulating its own treble of 1998-99, just as it prevented Liverpool winning a treble in the FA Cup final in 1977, is a strong motivation, as ten Hag acknowledged. “We will give everything,” he said. “And when I say everything, it’s everything. The fans can rely on that.”
Brighton, meanwhile, simply isn’t used to semifinals; this is only the third in its history and it has never won major silverware. Its fans sang to the marching band number of “Sussex by the Sea” and seemed thoroughly to enjoy the day—as they should. They should also enjoy a first-ever European campaign, which, barring some sort of collapse in the final weeks of the league campaign, will surely be theirs. The only question is whether it comes in the Europa League or the Conference League.
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Crucially, this felt like an occasion, which is more than could be said for Saturday’s semifinal between City and Championship side Sheffield United. The official attendance at Wembley on Saturday was just 69,000, a little over 75% capacity. And the truth is, it was probably a little lower than that with debenture holders choosing not to turn up.
That is the result if a number of factors, none of them heathy. The Football Association insists on hosting semifinals at Wembley, despite the travel difficulties for fans from outside London and the sense that it diminishes the magic of a Wembley final, because that’s how it makes most money. City fans, jaded by success, no longer travel for mere semifinals in vast numbers, while Sheffield United fans perhaps thought it not with the hassle for a game their club would almost certainly lose (and given the state of Britain’s railways, the difficulty of returning home after a 4:45 p.m. kickoff and the expense of a London hotel, who can blame either set?)
City’s win was as facile as it always seemed likely to be with Riyad Mahrez scoring a hat trick in a 3–0 victory. Five points behind Arsenal with two games in hand, in the Champions League semifinal and now in the FA Cup final, City is just 12 games from winning only the second treble in English football history. United’s task is to stop it.
