Magic of the FA Cup: When did Liverpool, City, Chelsea fail against Underdogs?

„And now the news…“ Plymouth Argyle against FC Liverpool 1:0. Football trips and tickets FA Cup are among the competitions in English football that are in high demand due to their huge tradition. The FA Cup thrives on big names, but also on unforgettable underdogs. Since February 9, 2025, the history of the FA Cup has been enriched by a sensation. Plymouth Argyle from the second-tier Championship defeated Premier League leaders FC Liverpool 1:0 (0:0). 

It is not often that Austrian newspapers lead with a game from England. On February 10, 2025, this was the case with the Vienna Kronen-Zeitung – and that was due to the man who had coached the next FA Cup miracle. It was Miron Muslic, Austrian coach of Plymouth Argyle. 

“Sensation – Muslic knocks Liverpool out!” titled the Krone about the coup with the former coach of Upper Austrian SV Ried and Cercle Brugge in Belgium.

“This is one of the best teams world football has to offer,” Muslic told the newspaper in advance, “when the time comes, I’ll really get feverish, I’ll have to pinch myself again.”

“Came here with a dream”

He probably had to! Just like Ryan Hardie, who sealed the sensation with his penalty goal against “The Slot Machine,” as FC Liverpool under coach Arne Slot is also called.

“We all came here with a dream,” Hardie said afterwards to TNT Sports, “and we made it come true.” 

Slot had changed “the best team world football has to offer” (Muslic), the Premier League leaders with a market value of nearly one billion euros, in ten positions. 

The Dutchman gambled! Without stars like former Leipzig player Dominik Szoboszlai, Cody Gakpo, or top scorer Mo Salah, Liverpool, which had just a few days earlier so confidently beaten Tottenham Hotspur (4:0 / EFL Cup semi-final), squandered the dream of 4 titles this season. 

That the Premier League leader, FC Liverpool, was eliminated in Round 4 by the 24th and last team of the Championship, i.e., a lower-league team, this phenomenon has happened only four times since 2000. 

Let’s look back at these legendary matches!

2018: “Wonderwall” vs. “Will Grigg’s on Fire!”

This was the last sensation before the match at Home Park, Wigan Athletic against Manchester City 2018.

The then third-tier Football League One club, a former Premier League team, eliminated Premier League leader Manchester City in the 2017/2018 FA Cup Round of 16.
The song on the stands of the DW Stadium had already been a hit. Since Euro 2016, half of Europe had been singing it: “Will Grigg’s on Fire!” (Melody: Freed from Desire, Gala, 1997). 

The predictions were the same as before Plymouth’s coup against Liverpool. “You can do something against Manchester City,” said BBC commentator Steve Wilson on Match of the Day with Gary Lineker, “that’s probably what Paul Cook (coach of Wigan Athletic, ed.) told his team, but this is Manchester City, this is one of the best teams English football has ever seen.”

Yes, yet Northern Irish striker Will Grigg scored the decisive 1:0 (79'). When the match ended, the song of the band, who actually supports Manchester City, but who can also be counted as local heroes in Wigan, just 30 kilometers away, played from the loudspeakers: Oasis with “Wonderwall.”

For Wigan Athletic fans, it was the signal for a pitch invasion. 

2:1 against Leeds – In Cardiff, all hell broke loose

Also in Cardiff, on January 6, 2002, no one could stay seated. Cardiff City against the 2001 Champions League semi-finalists, Leeds United 2:1.

Before the kick-off, it would have been hard to imagine that “The Peacocks,” with players like Rio Ferdinand, Jonathan Woodgate, David Batty, Lee Bowyer, Robbie “The God” Fowler, and Mark Viduka in the starting eleven, could fail in the Welsh capital.

But Scott Young (87') delivered a knockout blow similar to Will Grigg years later. The “Pitch Invasion” had consequences: Four fans were arrested, and Leeds United’s Ian Harte and Danny Mills were hit by thrown objects. 

FA Cup isn’t always a party…

Finally, let’s go to London’s Stamford Bridge. January 2015. The poster featured none other than Chelsea’s legendary striker Didier Drogba with the Champions League trophy, which he had won with the “Blues” in the 2012 final in Munich against hosts Bayern Munich. A photo like from another galaxy. On this Saturday, political scientist Adam Ratcliffe, living in Manchester, traveled with around 6,000 other supporters of third-tier Bradford City FC to London for the FA Cup match against the big FC Chelsea. 

The biggest match of the 2010s

Neither the self-confident Chelsea coach José Mourinho, (“I never said I’m the best. I only said I don’t know anyone better.”) who had changed his team by nine positions compared to the 1:1 in the league match in Liverpool, nor Bradford fan Adam Ratcliffe, his brother Nick, and their friends Liam Ramsden and Jack Diamond had any idea what this bitterly cold football evening at Stamford Bridge would bring…

It wasn’t just “One of the all-time FA Cup shocks,” one of the biggest shocks for a favorite in more than 130 years of FA Cup, as the Independent wrote, but a triumph for traditionalists and professional outsiders. 

The match of January 24, 2015, was voted by the Telegraph & Argus in 2019 as the “Game of the 2010s.” 

“The Blues” of Chelsea FC seemed to be the sure and expected winner after goals from Gary Cahill and Ramires. Jon Stead reduced the score to 1:2 before the break, and then Filipe Morais, Andy Halliday, and Mark Yeates turned the match in Bradford City’s favor in the last 15 minutes. That Morais, a player who had not been given a new contract by Chelsea FC, scored made it even more sensational.

“I still can’t believe it, what a day, simply heroic,” Adam Ratcliffe told me after the match.