Key events
Team news: Bernardo and Fred start
No big surprises on either side. Pep Guardiola picks the XI that destroyed Real Madrid and Arsenal. That means Bernardo Silva is preferred to Riyad Mahrez, who scored a hat-trick for City in the semi-final.
Erik ten Hag has picked Fred to man-mark Kevin De Bruyne, as he did at Old Trafford in January. Bruno Fernandes will play from the right wing.
Man City (3-2-2-3ish) Ortega; Walker, Dias, Akanji; Stones, Rodri; De Bruyne, Gundogan; Bernardo, Haaland, Grealish.
Substitutes: tbc
Man Utd (4-2-3-1ish) De Gea; Wan-Bissaka, Varane, Lindelof, Shaw; Casemiro, Fred; Fernandes, Eriksen, Sancho; Rashford.
Substitutes: tbc
Referee Paul Tierney.
Just as lazy livebloggeres sometimes prepare entries in advance and then launch them at the appropriate time, so the FA’s chosen engraver has already carved ‘2023 MANCHESTER’ on the FA Cup. Thankfully, unlike some hapless clowns I could mention, he didn’t make any typos.
From the archive: the Joy of Six (FA Cup final department)
The road to Wembley (United dept)
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Third round Everton (H) 3-1
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Fourth round Reading (H) 3-1
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Fifth round West Ham (H) 3-1
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Quarter-final Fulham (H) yep, 3-1
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Semi-final Brighton (N) 0-0 (7-6 pens)
The road to Wembley (City dept)
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Third round Chelsea (H) 4-0
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Fourth round Arsenal (H) 1-0
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Fifth round Bristol City (A) 3-0
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Quarter-final Burnley (H) 6-0
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Semi-final Sheff Utd (N) 3-0
2023-24 department
And it looks like Mateo Kovacic is on his way to Manchester City as well.
“Been waiting a supporting lifetime for a Manchester derby cup final,” writes Richard Temple. “CTID but have a feeling United will nick it today.”
There is a way United can win – we saw it in January, pretty much – but there’s also a way City can be 6-1 up after 73 minutes. The key, I think, is how United deal with Ben Stokes John Stones and the overload in midfield. They handled City really well at Old Trafford in January, but Stones didn’t play that game and from memory Joao Cancelo didn’t really make a box midfield.
FA Cup final supplement (part 2)
“Good to see Ben Stokes warming up for the Ashes with an FA Cup final,” says Leo in Sydney, a reference to a typo in the possible XIs that has since been airbrushed from history, or would have been but for this email. “Is there anything he can’t do?”
With typos like that, I’m glad David White is no longer playing for City.
The closest these teams have come to playing in a cup final was 12 years ago: the FA Cup semi-final at Wembley, with Stoke or Bolton waiting in the final (no offence, although that is quite offensive isn’t it). It was, as the former Guardian writer Nathan Barley used to say, the day the world changed.
Yaya Toure scored the only goal after a mistake from Michael Carrick, and the match was a bookend in Manchester derby history. United will hope to add another today.
FA Cup final supplement (part 1)
Early team news
Pep Guardiola confirmed that Stefan Ortega will start in goal for Manchester City, and that he has a full squad to choose from. Either he’s very lucky, or he has managed this uniquely demanding season like a genius.
Manchester United are without six of their first-team squad, including three likely starters: Lisandro Martinez, Anthony Martial and Antony. There’s an outside chance Antony will be fit enough for the bench.
Possible XIs
Man City (3-2-2-3ish) Ortega; Walker, Dias, Akanji; Stones, Rodri; De Bruyne, Gundogan; Mahrez, Haaland, Grealish.
Man Utd (4-2-3-1ish) De Gea; Wan-Bissaka, Varane, Lindelof, Shaw; Casemiro, Fred; Fernandes, Eriksen, Sancho; Rashford.
Preamble
And now for something completely different. Never mind the FA Cup; this is the first time Manchester City and Manchester United have met in the final of any competition. That’s not quite as unlikely as it sounds – Arsenal and Spurs have never met in a final either – but it does make for a unique occasion. Especially as it’s also the first FA Cup final in which two doubles and a treble have been at stake.
City are two games away from joining United in the promised land, an achievement that has been on the cards since Abu Dhabi x Pep Guardiola was launched in 2016. If all goes to plan in the next eight days 2022-23 will be the greatest season in City’s history, the year their awesome dominance of English football reached its logical conclusion.
United aspire to greater prizes than the Carabao and FA Cups. But Rome wasn’t built in a season, and victory today would turn a fine first season under Erik ten Hag into an outstanding one. They beat City 2-1 at Old Trafford in January, although they also lost 6-3 at the Etihad, and they were flattered by that scoreline.
It’s a clash of the titans, 1st v 3rd in Premier League terms, yet it also has a whiff of David and Goliath. Historical odds are a handy gauge of this thing, and United have never been such outsiders for a cup final – not even when they met arguably the greatest club side of all, Pep Guardiola’s 2010-11 Barcelona, in the Champions League final.
In fact, United (3-1) are longer odds to win today than Wimbledon (11-4) were against Liverpool in 1988. And look what happened then.
Kick-off 3pm BST.
