It’s fitting that the team wearing royal blue would win the biggest sporting event in the world being held today; just hours after this Saturday’s hugest news event, the Royal Wedding, was held across town.
As uninteresting as the Meghan Markle-Prince Harry matrimonial event was to many of this site’s readers (trust me I feel ya on this one), the FA Cup Final wasn’t exactly a thrill a minute itself. Chelsea forward Eden Hazard provided the only scoring, and that came on a 22′ penalty kick, in the Blues’ 1-0 win over United, a match that was as dull as many reporters thought it could be on Friday.
That’s 90 minutes of my life I’ll never get back – what a poor quality #FACupFinal?
— Ian Cheeseman (@IanCheeseman) May 19, 2018
Both managers involved in this one, United’s Jose Mourinho and Chelsea’s Antonio Conte, faced questions yesterday from the media about the lack of entertainment that we’ve seen in so many of United’s contests this season. Conte wisely and appropriately evaded the query, while Mourinho responded defensively, saying he doesn’t find 6-0 matches to be entertaining.
United dominated possession, as they had the ball about twice as long as Chelsea did. They also had an 18-6 advantage in shots and put five on the opposing goal to Chelsea’s three. It all prompted Mourinho to say afterward that United’s losing this match was undeserved; but it’s doubtful that many other people will agree with him.
Eden Hazard won the free kick after opposing defender Phil Jones was shown a yellow for his challenge on the Belgian. Many wondered why Jones wasn’t shown red and sent off, given how Hazard was awarded the spot kick.
That’s because of the very recent rule change known as “double jeopardy.” The official ruled that Jones was going for the ball, and thus if you’re judged to be after the ball at the not the opposing player, as you disrupt a scoring opportunity, it’s yellow, not red.
This play was the most interesting part of the match by far.
Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank.net and TheBank.News, which is partnered with News Now. Banks, a former writer for the Washington Times, NBC Chicago.com and Chicago Tribune.com, currently contributes regularly to WGN CLTV and the Tribune company’s blogging community Chicago Now.
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