Anybody who switched on BeIn Sports 12 on Thursday night would have been confronted with a game that ordinarily wouldn’t have much significance to those outside the tiny handful of UAE expat supporters of the two clubs involved.
But the lower-league local rivalry of Bristol Rovers v Cardiff City, in the first round of the English Football League Cup, gave viewers a curious experience – and, no, not because Cardiff are actually a Welsh club.
This season, there’s a new name for the League Cup (most recently the Capital One Cup), having previously been sponsored by everything from long-since-defunct British electrical retailers Rumbelows to, err, milk.
In this round, clubs were split into "north" and "south" halves of the draw. The second round, however, sees the entry of Premier League teams not competing in Europe this season, and things are complicated by a seeding system, ostensibly designed to give the big boys easier initial passages.
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But with the second-round draw having already been made earlier in the week, the seeding threw up a bizarre mismatch in Cardiff's trip across the Severn Bridge to Bristol. It wasn't a straight knockout, per se, you see – the quirks of the seeding meant that former club's reward for qualification would be an away trip to League 1 also-rans Scunthorpe United; the latter could seal a prime tie at Chelsea.
It was a largely dour game until the final moments of extra-time, after a goalless 90 minutes. The decisive strike was a moment of brilliance from Rovers midfielder Chris Lines, who banged in a 35-yard pile-driver.
Maybe it was the home advantage swelling the crowd noise whenever their team went forward or their underdog status as a just-promoted League One side, compared with Cardiff’s Championship status. But it looked, outwardly at least, as if the Bristol club wanted it more – and in a very real way, they had rather more to play for. They will now play at Stamford Bridge later this month. Cardiff probably won’t be lamenting their missed journey to Scunthorpe for too long.
With no seeding in the third round, the strange oddity of a knockout tie where the two teams are playing for different rewards won’t be repeated in the EFL Cup for at least another 12 months. For next season, the predicament could be neatly solved by the powers that be deigning to wait until all ties are played before drawing the next round. But even then, while seeding works neatly in sports such as tennis, its place in domestic football seems incongruous at best, and in this instance, faintly ridiculous.
aworkman@thenational.ae
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