| Atletico Topo Chico #27 | 39 – 46 | Hung Like a Bony #2 |
| CG XI #11 | 32 – 38 | Sporting Wicker Park #14 |
| De Bruyne Trousers #8 | 52 – 53 | StillluvQPR #24 |
| Goleta Hotspur #3 | 43 – 42 | The Phenoms #10 |
Wow, what an unbelievable weekend of Cup action!
Three same-league matchups, one of which pitted first against second, the two highest scores came out of the same match and two games went right down to a single point! Thrilling stuff. One team from each division go through to the Final Four, which is made up of the current Champions League holders looking to do the Double, a former BFFA Cup champion and two teams at the top of their leagues.
Atletico Topo Chico 39 – 46 Hung Like a Bony
Three BFFA Cup encounters, three wins for Bony. Perhaps unsurprising that the team currently ranked second overall would have the firepower to get themselves into the Semi-Finals, but it wasn’t as easy as you might think. There was the small matter of a 15-point gameweek for Hung’s Cold Palmer and an unecessary red card for ATC’s Anthony Gordon. Those two aside, it was a reasonably even match. ATC got three clean sheets from the three available. Hung got two and a Fulham assist. The rest was pretty pedestrian, but I think the victory was deserved for that panenka by Palmer.
CG XI 32 – 38 Sporting Wicker Park
Goals from Jean-Philippe Mateta and Rodrigo Muniz were enough to see the last remaining Premier League side safely into the Semi-FInals. CG XI contested their top flight opponents with assists from Luis Paquetá and Morgan Gibbs-White but couldn’t find the back of the net, despite two shots-on-target from Darwin Núñez. Rayan Aït-Nouri came on at the end of the gameweek for the absent Julian Alvarez, but wasn’t able to bring a clean sheet with him, whilst Gabriel remained on the bench with his tenth clean sheet of the season.
And have we mentioned that Sporting Wicker Park won the Champions League this season? We have? Well did we also mention who they beat in their Semi-Final…?
De Bruyne Trousers 52 – 53 StillluvQPR
Another top-ten team is knocked out by seemingly struggling opponents, but there is absolutely no shame in going out to the top-scoring team in the round. There will naturally be the agonising feeling of coming so close. And there wasn’t a lot that DBT did wrong; normally fingers could be pointed at players picking up yellow cards but DBT took no bookings at all over the weekend. Ivan Toney had a goal disallowed for being a shoulder offside, Zabarnyi lost his clean sheet in the 87th minute when his ‘keeper spilled the ball and Ortega was one save short of another point, which wasn’t really his fault as Arsenal only had two shots on target all game.
For the perennial League One survivalists, there was a number of areas where they could have lost the game. Richarlison and his potential replacement Evan Ferguson both came on only in the final ten minutes for cameo appearances, Gakpo came on with a minute left in regular time and subsequentially got booked, Isak also got booked in injury time, whilst Emi Martinez just managed to get that golden third save for an extra point and edge StillluvQPR into the Final Four.
Goleta Hotspur 43 – 42 The Phenoms
Billed early on as the one to watch, it was a good opportunity for the two promotion-hopefuls to showcase their talent and pursue a Double of their own. That opportunity has gone to the team that has been a member of the BFFA from Season 1, but have never got past the Third Round. This season, at the eleventh attempt, Goleta Hotspur have forced their way into the Semi-Finals and, currently ranked fifth overall, are looking good to go one further. (They are however facing a side that have gone all the way before and have just knocked out another top-five side, but more on that later.)
Yet again, we are sympathising with the team that were knocked out by one point and we won’t focus on the (perfectly reasonable) choice of substitutes, but there is an obvious culprit this time, highlighted in red. When Rob Jones showed Anthony Gordon his second yellow card for kicking the ball away in the fourth minute of injury time, no-one suspected it would have such big ramifications on this Quarter-Final. Indeed, after the first game of the weekend, Gordon still returned with 8 fantasy points and Bowen alongside him with 10. Meanwhile Hotspur, who began the 3pm games with just a single point from Fabian Schär, were facing an uphill struggle already seventeen points down.
It was a busy Saturday with eight games on the card and by time the day was through, Goleta were back to within a point of the rookie Phenoms; 33-34 down and both teams with three players to come. In the penultimate match, Hotspurs’ Pascal Groß was facing The Phenoms’ Conor Bradley. Luckily for the new boys, Groß played a more defensive role and didn’t reap any extra points (in fact, he got booked very early on and nearly scuppered Goleta’s chances), whilst Bradley was commended with two bonus points.
34-38.
Then it came down to the final game. The Phenoms were backing the goal-scoring prowess of City with De Bruyne and Álvarez in sky blue, whilst Goleta hedged their bets with Ben White and Phil Foden facing each other. And so, with chances severely lacking and goals failing to materialize, White’s clean sheet swung the game back in Goleta’s favour at the very end of the gameweek. Martinelli (1pt) replaced the unused Álvarez for The Phenoms, but it was ultimately too little to hold on for a draw. Goleta go through and can prepare for a doubly important GW33; The Phenoms can concentrate on preparing to do battle with them again in the enlarged GW34.
The Semi-Finals
Future Round Dates
You must be logged in to post a comment.