The 3rd round of the FA Cup is still one of the most highly anticipated weekends in the British sporting calendar. A handful of perceived minnows get the opportunity each season to go toe-to-toe with the biggest and best in the domestic football pyramid. FA Cup upsets of the past have cemented places for footballers and clubs into the sporting folklore of this country. A certain romanticism remains in the potential for a semi-professional David slaying their Premier League Goliath and writing themselves into the footballing history books.

Tamworth very nearly became that team earlier this month, taking Premier League Tottenham Hotspur to extra time and proving more than a match for a team 96 places above them. Spurs ran out eventual 3-0 winners AET, securing a tough tie against Aston Villa in the next round. Few would argue that the scoreline did anything but flatter a stuttering Spurs side that looked uncomfortable playing in front of a hostile crowd of nearly 4,000. 

A clear case for the return of the replay?

In an understandable post-game outcry, fans insist this was a clear example of why the FA was wrong to do away with replaying games in the event of a draw. Clearly, a replay for Tamworth would have been an incredibly lucrative fixture for the club, allowing them to net 45% of the gate receipts at what would likely have been close to a sell-out at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium. Even assuming cheaper ticket prices and less than a capacity crowd, the club would still likely have received in excess of £1m (excluding TV and other commercial streams and benefits). To put this into context, Tamworth’s annual revenue is around £1.6m, a potentially game-changing sum of money for the club.

The issue with this line of thought is it’s still largely hypothetical. It is worth noting that Tamworth avoided a replay in the 2^nd round when they knocked out League One Burton Albion on penalties. Would they have survived the replay? A similar question exists; would Spurs have allowed it to go to a replay in the 3rd round? Surely, the likes of Son and Kulusevski would have been introduced earlier, knowing that there was the potential to add further to the existing fixture congestion. In reality, the FA Cup replay rarely affected the non-league teams but more regularly ended in a fixture pile-up for teams in League One and above, hence the recent change.

So what changes should be made?

Part of the beauty of this month’s encounter was that it was played in a small, intimate venue, on a challenging artificial surface. The main spectacle was seeing the perceived pampered Premier League stars forced into unfamiliar semi-professional surroundings, a situation that heightens the chance of that much coveted ‘cup-set’. The change the FA should be making is to ensure that these scenarios happen more regularly giving the lower league team home advantage in the first rounds of the FA Cup proper.

Germany has been taking the lead on this, and since 1982, unseeded teams (mainly amateur sides and those from 3.Liga) have been given home advantage over seeded teams in the first two rounds of the DFB Pokal. The aim being to ensure that stadiums remain full and competitiveness high with that greater interest in early-round games.

Fourth-tier Rot-Weiss Essen shock Bayer Leverkusen in the 20/21 Pokal

It is difficult to directly compare the chance of an upset in Germany vs English domestic competition due to both the seeding method and the relative distribution and strength of teams across both pyramids. But it is hard to argue against German domestic cup competition seeing more than its fair share of giant killings compared to English equivalents. Even if the current season can be considered relatively tepid for this in Germany, the likes of Hannover 96, Bochum and Fortuna Dusseldorf were still all dispatched by unseeded opposition in the first round of this year’s competition. The below lists instances where Bundesliga teams have been knocked out by fourth division sides (mainly amateur) and below in the last decade.

2015–16	First round	SpVgg Unterhaching	FC Ingolstadt	2–1
2015–16	First round	Carl Zeiss Jena	Hamburger SV	3–2 (a.e.t.)
2016–17	Second round	Astoria Walldorf	Darmstadt 98	1–0
2018–19	First round	SSV Ulm	Eintracht Frankfurt	2–1
2019–20	First round	SC Verl	FC Augsburg	2–1
2019–20	Second round	1. FC Saarbrücken	1. FC Köln	3–2
2019–20	Quarter-finals	1. FC Saarbrücken	Fortuna Düsseldorf	1–1 (a.e.t.) (7-6 p)
2020–21	First round	Rot-Weiss Essen	Arminia Bielefeld	1–0
2020–21	Third round	Rot-Weiss Essen	Bayer Leverkusen	2–1 (a.e.t.)
2021–22	First round	SV Babelsberg	Greuther Fürth	2–2 (a.e.t.) (5-4 p)
2021–22	First round	Preußen Münster	VfL Wolfsburg	2–0
2023–24	First round	FC Homburg	Darmstadt 98	3–0

The only non-league side to beat a top division side in the Premier League era was Lincoln City when they dramatically beat Burnley in 2017. Again, this isn’t a fair comparison because there are far less games between amateur and top division sides in England, but clearly, Germany leads the way in helping facilitate dramatic mis-matches in their cup competitions.

Lincoln beat Burnley in 2017 to become the first non-league team in more than a century to reach the FA Cup quarter finals

Jurgen Klopp, then managing Liverpool, was a leading advocate for scrapping replays and reversing home advantage. He made the following comments in 2020 (in the midst of domestic and international fixture congestion for his club):

“Replays in the FA Cup? Have a penalty shoot-out.”

“The explanation against that is that the smaller teams have a chance to win the game. Then, give them the home game in the first place. Go there, play there. If they beat us, congratulations. Go for it.”

The result of ceding home field advantage to sides says league 2 and below (provided they are playing a team from a higher division) would raise the interest in not just the third round, but potentially the opening two rounds of the FA Cup proper as well. There doesn’t need to be a replication of the seeding system used in Germany, and games beyond the 3rd round could remain in their current format.

Obviously, there are concerns that would need to be addressed, namely the financial impact on clubs of making this change. With the current 45% split of ticket revenue, this proposed move would negatively impact both sides, but proportionally the lower league side. The FA would need to be creative with compensation through a change in the broadcast splits—currently 50/50—and potentially the prize money available to lower league teams, as well. Whilst Premier League teams might cry foul, the FA Cup is not a significant revenue stream for most top division clubs in the context of their overall earnings.

With greater interest comes greater advertising and television scope.There is potential to grow the overall financial FA Cup pot with this change and make it more lucrative—and importantly, more interesting—for all.

Is it time we followed the German lead?