Macclesfield’s Historic Upset Is Why The FA Cup Rules

The early rounds of the FA Cup are supposed to be straightforward. While every lower-division team that faces Premier League opposition dreams of pulling off the unexpected, these matches tend to look more like Manchester City's 10-1 thrashing of League One side Exeter City on Saturday. The money and talent gap between divisions is just too ginormous for upsets to be much more than pipe dreams. The best one can usually hope for is something like Wrexham's win over Nottingham Forest on penalty kicks last Friday—a nice story, to be sure, but the Championship's ninth-placed team besting the EPL's 17th-placed team isn't exactly David killing Goliath.

But the thing about dreams is that sometimes they do come true, especially in a low-scoring sport like soccer, and especially especially in a single-leg knockout match. Just ask reigning FA Cup champions Crystal Palace, who went into Saturday's match against sixth-tier Macclesfield FC expecting to win comfortably, only to see its cup defense end in stunning fashion at the hands of a semi-professional side.