The magic of the FA Cup elevated Arsenal and condemned Tottenham

FA Cup semifinals are weird things. It’s the neutral venue that does it. Once upon a time they were played at a ground of relative convenience for the two teams; these days, because the FA has loans to repay, they’re both at New Wembley. Don’t ponder that shift in priorities too long. It’ll only depress you.

More specifically, it’s the occasion: venue, crowd balance, the descent of fans en masse upon another city. After all, there’s a name for competitive games that take place in neutral grounds with half the crowd supporting one side, half the crowd the other. They’re called cup finals. Everybody makes an extra effort, and at the end there are medals for the losers and better medals, plus a shiny pot, for the winners.

By extending this ritual to its semifinals — without the medals — the FA Cup reinforces its general magnificence, the cachet that comes with being the oldest organised football competition in the world. I’m so damn magical, it says, that one final isn’t enough. I have sub-finals. I have finals to get into my final. Would you be interested in sponsoring me?

This strange final-but-not-quite-final grandiosity is only exacerbated when, as with this season, the quirks of the draw throw four of the country’s strongest teams at one another. Tottenham Hotspur against Chelsea! Arsenal against Manchester City! The superest of all possible Sundays, except some of it’s on the BBC.

The extension of pomp and circumstance to the semis serves to intensify the significance of everything that happens there. Consider Tottenham, who went into the game against Chelsea as, by common consent, the form team in the country, and came out of it defeated and shaking their heads. “For one reason and another we didn’t get over the finish line,” said Harry Kane afterwards, sounding very much like a man with a loser’s medal hanging around his neck.

What was already a big game, by virtue of the teams involved and the fact that it’s the game before the final, becomes just that little bit bigger because it has the dressing of a final. It’s a day out. It’s an occasion. A Spurs loss was always going to see PlayingagainstChelseaisdifficultitis folded into the overarching diagnosis of yet another outbreak of Spursiness. But here, with the crowds streaming back down Wembley Way even before 90 minutes ticked over, it all seemed magnified. More Spursy than heading off down Seven Sisters Road could ever be.

Or consider their north London brethren Arsenal. An Arsenal win against Manchester City was always going have some kind of grand import on the question of Arsene Wenger’s future.

When empires start to totter, everything is an omen and everything is a statement. Good games aren’t just matters of competence but of faith; bad performances aren’t just mistakes but expressions of doubt or cries for help. Alexis Sanchez isn’t grimacing because he’s knackered and he’s losing; he’s grimacing because he despises his colleagues, holds his manager in contempt, and is already dreaming of the zeroes on his Chelsea contract.

Or, as we saw on Sunday, Arsenal kicking and scrapping and winning for their manager. That they did so at Wembley felt just a little more resonant, somehow, then if they’d done so at the Emirates. They rose to the occasion, to the venue. The ghost of Bobby Moore left its statue and possessed Rob Holding.

There’s a certain logic at work here. The significance of football derives from a series of shared beliefs about what matters and what doesn’t; that’s why Bill Shankly’s joke about it being more important than life and death is both a joke and completely true. It matters because we decide it matters. Its significance is what we give it, refracted back to us. If we place significance on Wembley showpieces — and we do, that’s why the thing has an arch — then it follows that what happens there matters more than what happens anywhere else.

In one sense, anyway. At the same time, occasion can be misleading, intoxicating. Perhaps, without the shadow of the arch, we might conclude that this wasn’t another rash of Spursiness, but the less common, quite serious-sounding SonHeungMinisnotawingbackenza. Was this a resounding show of faith in Wenger and his methods, or a close game decided by the early departure of David Silva and, with him, the footballing brain of Manchester City?

Perhaps it’s futile to try and untangle it all like this. Cup finals, even these weird pseudo-finals, are about drawing grand conclusions from tiny moments. The stage magnifies the glory and the misery; just one more stiff turn on the thumbscrew of hype. The FA Cup may not be what it once was. But the rituals, and the stage, means it still has the knack of putting on a decent show.