We love the FA Cup here in England but imagine if it was open to any team who wanted to enter. The Dog & Duck away to Arsenal.
Now further extend the invite to teams in overseas territories around the globe. Say, for example, Dandy Town Hornets (a real club from Bermuda) playing at home to Liverpool.
Well that is exactly the case in France with their FA Cup equivalent – the Coupe De France. Every year thousands of clubs from all over France and their overseas territories enter the Coupe De France, occasionally resulting in a well-known professional team having to venture to the far side of the globe to play an amateur side on a shocking pitch in a stadium that barely holds 100 people.
On average, more than 7,000 clubs begin the competition, and yes, it is a random knock-out. That means the draw can take as long as a Champions League one!
Another nice bit of tradition for the purists among you is that players competing in the Coupe De France still have to wear numbers 1-11 (up to 18 including subs).
There are a total of 14 rounds in the competition. However, rounds in the competition are determined through each region in France with one of the main reasons being to reduce travel costs.
The professional clubs enter at round seven, usually around mid-November time. For clubs in the overseas territories they play regionally before two enter the next round.
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For most of us, we only pay attention to a passing scoreline we hear of when PSG or Lyon eventually win it, but the joy of the competition is in the earlier rounds it seems.
In last season’s competition, AS Excelsior welcomed Ligue 1 giants Lille to the tiny Reunion Islands in the Indian Ocean. Lille complained to the French FA about the 19,000 KM round trip to the tiny stadium in Saint-Joseph.
Before that, the last side to reach round seven were AS Mont-Dore in 2010 – a team from the Pacific islands of New Caledonia.
I’d long for the days when City were drawn away to a team in the Cayman Islands. In our own FA Cup, teams are prohibited from entering due to red ape issues, like not having floodlights. I say they should revamp it by allowing anybody to enter!