Chapter 346: FA Cup First Round Begins

The first round begins

Chelsea continued their rapid progress in the Premier League by defeating Middlesbrough in the 22nd round of the league.

However, for Chelsea, the injury problems faced by the team are becoming more and more serious. After the match with Middlesbrough, an inexplicable influenza knocked Frank Lampard, Damien Duff and others down easily. Fortunately, although Wang Li has not yet reached the state of being immune to cold and heat, this minor illness can no longer invade his body, so he was spared from depression.

This is indeed a heavy blow to Chelsea, which is short of players. If it were not for the timely recovery of captain John Terry and Smelding, the team might not even be able to put together their 16-man roster for the FA Cup match on January 8. In this case, they can only recruit players from the reserve team.

As for the youth team?

Head coach Jose Mourinho never goes there, and perhaps it is a mistake for these youngsters to choose to come to Chelsea.

This is not the only bad news for Mourinho. Another piece of bad news came from La Liga, Chelsea and Real Betis's winter transfer negotiations for Joaquin Sanchez Rodriguez failed. Although Chelsea's price was good, Real Betis was facing a derby in the same city, and it was obviously unwise to sell the team's main players before the war.

In this case, Mourinho can only turn his attention in other directions.

Jerry Jarosik, Nedved's former partner, caught the attention of the Portuguese.

Jarosik is currently 27 years old and plays for CSKA Moscow. He plays as a central midfielder. His arrival will alleviate the gap in the midfield caused by injuries to Lampard and others, and also give Mourinho an international player. In the past two seasons, Jarosik played 55 games for CSKA Moscow, scored 12 goals, and played 20 games for the Czech national team. He played on the same field with Nedved, Boschi and others in the European Championship qualifiers.

"I am very happy. This is the biggest opportunity in my career," Jarosik said after arriving in London. "I met with head coach Mourinho, and what he said to me gave me confidence and ambition." Mourinho had a certain impression of Jarosik earlier. The two had a "friendship" when he coached Porto.

"Mourinho has known Jerry for a long time," said Jarosik's agent, Kular. "He scored a goal against Porto and Mourinho remembered him from then on."

Although Chelsea's assistant coach Clark did not confirm the news of Jarosik's signing after the match with Middlesbrough, it is not difficult to conclude from his words that the possibility of Jarosik becoming a Chelsea player has reached 99%.

"There is no confirmed news yet. We are focused on the game and don't know if he is in the stands. If we think he can help the team in the short term, then we will bring him in, but it has not been signed yet."

During the negotiations, CSKA Moscow hoped that Jarosik would join Chelsea on loan, but Chelsea wanted to bring the player in permanently, and CSKA did not agree. In the end, the two sides reached an agreement on loan. Now, as long as Jarosik passes the physical examination on the second day, he will become Chelsea's first new aid in the winter transfer market.

However, the most important thing for Jarosik now is to gain recognition from his teammates.

There are two giants in the Chelsea locker room now - John Terry and Wang Li. One is the captain of the team, and the other is the best performer, Chelsea's pillar star. From this respect, the strength of Chelsea's "England Gang" is unquestionable. Lampard, Terry, Wang Li, Gallas, these four people are obviously the representatives of the "England Gang".

"He's pretty good, at least for now."

In an interview, Wang Li commented on the new player who has just joined the team. Although he is also a newcomer, his voice in Chelsea is unquestionable: "He has a good attitude. Chelsea needs the unity of the locker room. We will accept him."

Undoubtedly, since everyone has placed Wang Li in the position of 'boss', the tone of his voice is different now. In fact, he enjoys this 'boss' level status very much. At least many players will 'be obedient' to him.

"I believe that his arrival will add strength to Chelsea." Wang Li concluded.

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The FA Cup is a men's knockout football cup named and hosted by the English Football Association. This event is the oldest football match in the world and is a one-on-one knockout match between football clubs at all levels in England.

There is no seeding in the rules of the FA Cup, so the matchups and home and away games are completely determined by drawing lots. If the game is tied, the two sides will exchange home and away games for a replay. If the game is tied again, overtime and penalty shootouts will be held. For this reason, there are often upsets in the FA Cup where lower-level clubs eliminate higher-level clubs. Even so, due to the ancient significance of this season, in the eyes of English fans, the FA Cup championship honor is even equivalent to the Premier League championship.

Every August, all non-league clubs with basic facilities under the English Football Association begin elimination preliminaries. Compared with previous years, this year's FA Cup is even more unusual. In this season, a total of 660 clubs participated in the FA Cup, breaking the record of 656 participating teams in the 1921/22 season.

Teams from the Premier League and the Championship are eligible to skip some rounds of the FA Cup. Teams from these two levels can directly enter the top 64 of the FA Cup unconditionally, which means that Premier League teams can directly enter high-level knockout rounds.

Although this season has extraordinary historical significance, this alone will obviously not attract more Premier League teams to play hard, because no matter how significant the championship is, it does not have much practical value. Now, the reason why the FA Cup can still attract many teams to fight with all their strength is that the team that wins the FA Cup can qualify for the first round of the UEFA Cup the following year.

Of course, there are special cases. For example, if the team qualifies for the UEFA Champions League because of its league ranking, the runner-up of the FA Cup will replace the champion to qualify for the UEFA Cup. If the runner-up also qualifies for the UEFA Champions League, then the UEFA Cup quota will be given to other teams based on the English Premier League ranking.

On January 8, after most teams were eliminated in the first half of the FA Cup, the final round finally arrived, which was a brutal knockout round involving Premier League and Championship teams.

Chelsea was lucky as the draw determined that this knockout round would be held at Stamford Bridge, and their opponent was Scunthorpe, a League One team that had fought hard to reach the top 64 of the league.

Scunthorpe is a small city in the United Kingdom, located in the northeast of England. It is administratively part of North Lincolnshire, with a population of about 60,000. It is known as the industrial garden of Lincolnshire. The neighboring cities are Hull, York, Doncaster and Sheffield.

Scunthorpe United Football Club is the only recorded football team in the city. This year may be a happy year for Scunthorpe fans because they successfully won the Second Division championship and were promoted to the First Division for the first time in history.

Although the team is not well-known, Scunthorpe has trained many famous players over the years, including Kevin Keegan, Ray Clemence and even cricket superstar Ian Botham.

As a slowly developing First Division team, Scunthorpe's financial situation is as tight as many First Division teams. Compared with the teams in the English First Division, as a newly promoted team, they have indeed performed very well this season. However, no matter how hard they fight, Scunthorpe is an English First Division team. In the eyes of the media and fans, this team's luck is really bad. After finally scoring, the first opponent they met was Chelsea, which dominates the Premier League. They had almost no hope of winning.

Even Chelsea players thought so. On the day of the game, Mourinho didn't even send out any main players, which made the substitute players who usually found it difficult to play finally get a chance, although the opponent was really too inferior.

However, from the perspective of Scunthorpe, they are really lucky.

As a League One team, it is not easy to reach the last 64 of the FA Cup. First of all, 44 places have been occupied by Premier League and Championship teams. The remaining 20 places have to be selected from the 24 League One teams and the remaining hundreds of lower-level league teams. Due to the uncertainty of the FA Cup, there are no more than 10 League One teams that advance to the last 64 almost every year. As a newly promoted team in League One, Scunthorpe has done very well.

And now, they are even more "lucky" to meet Chelsea.

Perhaps the media will gloat over this misfortune, but even if Scunthorpe did not meet Chelsea, but an ordinary Premier League or even Championship team, they would still be eliminated. So what difference does it make what team they meet?

Meeting Chelsea brought Scunthorpe a practical benefit - pound income.

The game at Stamford Bridge, just the share of ticket revenue and television broadcast fees, can bring Scunthorpe at least 500,000 pounds in revenue. Before this game, the wealthy Chelsea even promised that all the revenue from the game would go to Scunthorpe. This can be regarded as a "charitable" way of supporting England's lower league teams.

All in all, Scunthorpe will get at least 1 million pounds in revenue. Perhaps from Chelsea's perspective, this amount of money is really a drop in the bucket and not worth mentioning, but for a League One team, it is indeed a considerable income, which is even enough for them to buy several players playing in League One.

At 2:30 pm on January 8, the FA Cup round of 64 knockout matches kicked off simultaneously in 32 stadiums, and many fans came to Stamford Bridge. As a first-round match, although the opponents were not worth mentioning, the Blues fans still came in a hurry to show their support.

As a game that was almost like a warm-up match, Mourinho was reluctant to send out the main lineup, which would be simply an overkill.

After the opening, the live commentator Creed Pesvak announced the lineup: goalkeeper Thomas Clark, defenders from left to right: Glen Johnson, Watt, Morais, Smertin, midfielders Joe Cole, Geremi, Thiago Mendes, Scott Parker, forwards Eidur Gudjohnsen, Didier Drogba.

This lineup was almost entirely composed of substitutes, which disappointed the Blues fans who came to the scene, but they also understood the team's approach. The only players on the bench who were genuine main players were Paulo Ferreira and Arkin Robben.

Wang Li did not even appear on the roster. As Chelsea's trump card, Mourinho was reluctant to let him play in this kind of game.

In fact, the course of the game proved that even Chelsea's full substitute lineup was much higher than that of the League One team.

In the 8th minute of the game, Scunthorpe player Spalowi passed the ball to Hayes in the penalty area from the right. The latter turned beautifully to get rid of Smerkin and shot with his right foot. The ball passed under Thomas and went into the net. This was Scunthorpe's first attack of the game and they scored. After this goal, all the Chelsea fans were stunned. They didn't expect that this inconspicuous opponent could break Chelsea's goal in the first attack.

However, Chelsea's subsequent performance did not disappoint them.

In the 15th minute of the game, Chelsea launched an attack from the middle. Gudjohnsen got rid of the opponent's defense in the frontcourt and made a low shot, but the ball was saved by the opponent's goalkeeper with both hands and went out of the bottom line.

Just three minutes later, Drogba received a pass from Gudjohnsen and passed it again on the left side of the small penalty area. Scunthorpe defender Butler made a clearance error, and Joe Cole shot with his right foot from 15 meters away from the goal to equalize the score.

In the 28th minute, the opponent's forward Crosby received a corner kick and headed the ball, but it was beautifully saved by Thomas at the bottom line. Then Butler received another corner kick and shot hard, but the ball went slightly wide of the post.

Afterwards, although both teams tried hard, neither team scored again. The score of the first half was fixed at 1:1 and the game entered the halftime break.

Playing like this after 45 minutes against an English League One team really failed to show the strength of England's dominant team this season. It also shows the decline of Chelsea's strength after the absence of Wang Li.

In the second half, the two sides changed venues and in the 50th minute, Gudjohnsen won a free kick outside the penalty area. The Icelander took the penalty himself. The ball hit the wall and deflected, then hit the crossbar and flew out of the bottom line.

In the 55th minute, Chelsea took a corner kick. After Joe Cole took the penalty, Drogba headed the ball in the penalty area, but unfortunately the ball went slightly wide of the goal.

The first fake player, Thiago Mendes, made a long pass to Drogba on the left, who quickly got rid of Burnie and made a cross. Scunthorpe's Crosby scored an own goal when he cleared Drogba's pass, causing the goalkeeper Msselwhite to be scored for the second time.

Chelsea finally reversed the score to 2:1.

In the 68th minute, Mourinho announced a substitution. He replaced Drogba with the latest striker introduced in the winter transfer window, Jarosik. This was the first time Jarosik appeared on the British field since the transfer and also the first time he appeared at Stamford Bridge.

In the 72nd minute, Taylor passed the ball to the edge of the small penalty area, and the unguarded Hayes headed the ball but was saved by Cudicini with one hand.

In the 85th minute, Robben, who came on as a substitute, received a wonderful pass from Watt and shot from 20 meters away from the goal, but was blocked by Msselwhite. Joe Cole's follow-up shot was also saved. Gudjohnsen shot from close range in the penalty area and the ball went directly into the net.

In the end, Chelsea defeated Scunthorpe 3:1 at home and advanced to the next round of the FA Cup knockouts.

Both sides were satisfied with the result of the match. For Mourinho, the match was just a training exercise, as he needed to keep Chelsea's substitutes in shape. Scunthorpe won a lot of pounds, as they will at least have the necessary transfer funds to play in the English League One after the end of this season.

"There is nothing much to say about the game itself. Our players showed their level and I am very happy to see that." At the press conference after the game, Jose Mourinho said expressionlessly to reporters: "Scunthorpe's performance was also very good. I was surprised that the opponent scored the first goal at the beginning of the game. So, I think there must be some problems in our defense. However, the opponent's performance in offense is also beyond doubt."

The Scunthorpe head coach was also very happy to get the recognition from Mourinho, the head coach of the world's top team. In this case, he would not be stingy with his words. Facing the media interviewing him, he praised the strength of Chelsea's players and emphasized that "the gap between us cannot be measured in miles", etc. In short, this young head coach was almost turning into a "sycophant", and Mourinho was grinning when he heard it.

Both teams achieved a win-win situation, which is really a good result.

However, for Mourinho and Chelsea, there is no time to reminisce about this game, because the intensive and terrifying stadium is about to arrive.

On January 13th, we will play against Manchester United at home in the League Cup.

In the 23rd round, we will challenge Tottenham Hotspur away.

For Chelsea, who vowed to win the 'quadruple crown', they must not lose the game against Manchester United. For the players, the league on the 15th is also very important, as it is related to the huge bonus they will receive.

For Chelsea now, the league is just a way to get bonuses, because that trophy is almost already booked.