The FA Cup starts today and I’m desperate for Aston Villa to win it

At 7.30pm on Friday 1st August, the 2025/26 FA Cup gets underway in North Yorkshire, where Pickering Town of the Northern Counties East League Premier Division host Cumbrian side Penrith.

Pickering, Penrith and 12 other clubs play their Extra Preliminary Round ties on Friday. Five games will be played on Sunday. In between, the FA Cup Extra Preliminary Round will dominate the non-league football landscape up and down the country on Saturday afternoon.

747 clubs have entered the FA Cup this season, the 145th time it’s taken place. The teams preparing to begin their cup runs this weekend are 12 wins away from a Wembley semi-final.

The FA Cup is two competitions in one, not only the oldest competition in world football but a perfect encapsulation of both faces of English game in all its glory. Pickering and Penrith aren’t going to win 13 matches and reach the final. That the route is available to them is already beautiful enough.

Saturday 16th May is 288 days away. The FA Cup final is a long way off. But the road to Wembley originates here so it’s an apposite time to acknowledge an objective that will be bouncing around my brain until it’s no longer possible to achieve it.

I really want Aston Villa to win the FA Cup.

When I was a kid, it seemed possible that Villa’s cup drought was a blip. 1957 was ancient history but not so many years away that it couldn’t be just an unfortunate dry spell. This season is the 69th since manager Eric Houghton and goalscorer Peter McParland led Villa to their seventh and last FA Cup win.

They’ve reached two finals in my lifetime. Two. The less said about them the better but the journey to Wembley to watch Villa in the final in 2015 was a long time coming and I’m old enough that winning English football’s admittedly diminished showpiece match is a life-long dream.

Winning the FA Cup would be a huge step forward for Villa

Last season, Villa went close again. The semi-final defeat against eventual winners Crystal Palace was especially difficult to take because they were, ultimately, beatable – a high-quality and dangerous side, no doubt, but beatable.

It felt like Villa defeated themselves again. It hurt so much more than coming up short in a heroic attempt at toppling Paris Saint-Germain after giving them a head-start in the Champions League and not just because Palace have Villa’s number to an absurdly predictable degree.

Winning the Premier League feels out of reach, even more so than winning the Champions League after last season’s thrilling continental exploits, but the 1980/81 First Division win was only a generation before mine. It isn’t remote, just difficult to repeat and unlikely to happen.

Winning a sixth League Cup would be great, certainly for supporters younger than me, but the fourth and fifth happened two years apart and I was fortunate enough to be at Wembley for both finals. They’re memories I can hold on to, not a pipe dream.

The FA Cup is different. For supporters who grew up with coverage of the FA Cup being an all-day affair on the BBC but knowing that their team hadn’t won it in their parents’ lifetime, never mind their own, it takes on an importance more in keeping with its golden era than its overshadowed, blunted prestige today.

Lifting the FA Cup for the eighth time wouldn’t make Villa the champions of England or give them a much-needed path back into the Champions League. It wouldn’t change their destiny in any tangible fashion, though it would be a route into Europe if they fell short elsewhere.

But this is a football club that needs a win. It needs silverware. Aston Villa have built a fantastic squad capable of winning something and I’d love it if they achieved it, for them as much as me.

The FA Cup isn’t just a realistic target. It’s a realistic target that would mean the world to generations of supporters who are old enough to have dreamed it but not old enough to have seen it.

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