Pep Guardiola was not in the mood for hyping up the FA Cup final as Manchester City prepare to face Crystal Palace at Wembley.
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Manchester United's Erik ten Hag and Manchester City's Pep Guardiola lead out the teams ahead of the FA Cup final
Pep Guardiola takes charge of his fourth FA Cup final with Manchester City this weekend.
(Image: Justin Setterfield - The FA/The FA via Getty Images)
It's the final nobody wants, apparently.
There has barely been a murmur about the FA Cup final this year, throwing a spanner in the Football Association's grand plans to restore the competition to its' former glories. Taking place on a day with no other fixture, the price to pay for that is a final before the end of the Premier League season and it feels like most people are firmly focussed on the top flight. Or their summer holidays.
Pep Guardiola has been more enthusiastic about Community Shields and Carabao Cup finals than he was about the FA Cup final this year.
Twelve months ago, even a Manchester derby final didn't seem to set too many pulses racing given it was a repeat of the year before. Manchester City had won the same fixture in the 2023 en-route to a treble and the 2024 showpiece was (literally) a hangover from winning the fourth Premier League title in succession.
City didn't show up, United celebrated in the sun and offered Erik Ten Hag a new deal, and Pep Guardiola had to deny that his players had celebrated the title win too hard and taken their eyes off the FA Cup prize. At various points this season, however, Guardiola has accepted that reality. He referenced that lack of preparation as a reason they lost the final when recalling the build-up on Friday.
"Winning is much better than losing, but last year we came into it having won four in a row and maybe our mind was not perfect," he said.
Now City are back in the final for a third year in a row, Guardiola openly admitted something else - that the FA Cup is not the priority these days. And he doubled down on his assertion that winning the cup won't make this season a successful one.
Any City player listening to the press conference won't have been filled with any fresh sense of drive or enthusiasm for the final. Maybe that's how Guardiola wants it.
"That is the problem. The FA Cup now is not the first choice," he said in a startling admission even if it was confirmation of what everybody knows. "Not anything is enough. Of course we want it - now we are here, we want to lift the trophy. We are disappointed for our performances this season but I'm pretty sure we will perform well and compete against them. It's definitely important."
It tallies with the message that the cup won't make the season a success. But surely not winning the cup will cement the season as undeniably poor whereas winning can send a message that even in an under-par campaign City can still win a major trophy. Football is all about momentum and trophies keep the cycle of winning turning.
Ruben Dias told the Manchester Evening News this week that the dressing room mentality feels more united than ever this season with almost everybody back, and that makes them 'dangerous.'
Of course City want more. Erling Haaland has called the season 'horrific' and 'boring' without a title push. Nobody accepts a final-week fight for the top five as good enough after four titles in a row. The Champions League failure still hurts.
But this is still a huge trophy and the low-key feel to the day before the cup final made you doubt there is a cup final at all.
Maybe it will all change at Wembley, then. As much as the feeling was underwhelming, Guardiola insisted the hunger is strong among his squad to win the cup. Dias' danger comment backs that up and Haaland will be desperate to get a first Wembley goal and first in a final for City.
If the motivation to win the cup isn't as strong as previous years, perhaps Guardiola can lean on the feeling that City can prove the doubters wrong with a cup final win at Wembley: as a collective and individually.
Maybe, for the first time in forever as everybody writes them off, City can thrive in an underdog, us-against-the-world mentality. Maybe that's how Guardiola wants it.
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