Last weekend Chelsea beat Manchester United 1-0 at a record attending FA Cup Final.
A sold out Wembley stadium saw record breaking 77,390 people attend the Women’s FA Cup final between Chelsea and Manchester United on Sunday 14th May. This major event saw Emma Hayes leading her side to their 3rd consecutive Women’s FA Cup, and the clubs 5th trophy on their history.
Sam Kerr showed why she is one of the world's best, as she scored the only goal in the match, winning it for The Blues.
This FA Cup final is a monumental event for women’s football and has helped spread the women’s game immensely. However, the FA Cup has not always been as popular.
The Women’s FA Cup was created in 1970, originally called The Women's FA Challenge Cup Competition. It consisted of 71 teams. This is compared to the staggering 438 teams that enter year in and year out across England and Wales, showing the substantial growth that women’s football has made.
Considering the competition has been going since 1970 for 53 years now, the first Women’s Final was only held at Wembley for the first time in 2015. This saw Notts County face Chelsea, where Chelsea won 1-0 and Eniola Aluko being the goalscorer.
One side that had major success in the 1970’s and 1980’s was Southampton Ladies. The Saints won the first three years of the competition but then lost the final in 1974 to Fodens. They managed to bounce back to win the historic trophy two seasons in a row after their final loss.
The magic of the FA Cup is how many underdog stories there have been throughout the years. One famous underdog story in the Women’s FA Cup is the 1996 FA Cup between Liverpool Ladies and Croydon Women. The game was level at full time and Croydon managed to win 3-2 on penalties. Croydon then went onto winning the competition again, four years later in 2000, beating Doncaster Belles 2-1.
Although the Women’s FA Cup has had many different winners across the years, the side currently with the most FA Cups is Arsenal, who have won the competition 14 times. No other side are near them to how many FA Cups they have won.
The Women's FA Cup has come such a long way since the creation of it in 1970, and hopefully we will be able to see more of a growth in the Women's game, following this record-breaking, historic match.
Comments