Dan Jones on the FA Cup Final… Fight! Fight! Fight! We can’t get enough of Punch and Judy bicker-slam

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Dan Jones18 May 2018

The FA Cup Final will have to work hard to capture the national interest, as it plays second bridesmaid from the left to a certain wedding you may have read about, going down directly beforehand in St George’s Chapel, Windsor.

But if there is one pair of star-crossed haters who can keep interest in the grand old game alive, it is Jose Mourinho and Antonio Conte: the managers of Manchester United and Chelsea, yes, but at heart just a pair of grumpy old men, ageing disgracefully, who approach every game of football they contend as though it is the perennially unresolved argument between Mr Punch and the Crocodile over who owns the string of chipolatas. Although we must publicly affect to disapprove of running feuds between managers and head coaches - bad examples set, game brought into disrepute, you know the drill - there is something quite delicious about a nice extended managerial spat, particularly when it involves Mourinho. And of course, it always involves Mourinho - the only thing that changes is who plays the croc on the end of the sausage-links.

Arsene Wenger? Pep Guardiola? Rafa Benitez? They’ve all been there, forming a sort of apostolic succession of exasperated tooth-gnashers, stretching back to - who knows? And, slightly, who cares. It is important to live in the moment, and that moment is 5.15pm tomorrow, Mourinho vs Conte. Fight! Fight! Fight! Or maybe just ‘have an animated exchange of insults across the demilitarized zone that divides the two technical areas and forgo shaking hands at the end’.

That’s usually enough to keep the crowd entertained.

Ah, you say, but the last time Conte and Mourinho met, back in February, they did shake hands — twice, indeed, as United beat Chelsea 2-1 at Old Trafford in the Premier League. And sure, they did. But you can bet that Kim Jong-Un and Donald Trump will shake hands at some point in the next 12 months; if you think that this is the same thing as giving up the nuclear-backed Twitter bantz for keeps then you have a few lessons to learn about international geopolitics in the age of post-stupid.

Anyway, back to football. Mourinho and Conte seem to be approaching tomorrow’s final affecting reconciliation, and focusing on the nitty-gritty of the game. But the stakes are sky high. Both men need silverware to rescue underwhelming seasons. And neither has a wonderful track record for bearing ill-fortune with equanimity. How much will it take to stir a pot of prior grudge that includes Jose’s sideways jibes about Conte’s hairline (July 2017) or Antonio suggesting that Mourinho had demenza senile (last January)?

Honestly? Probably not that much. And that’s no bad thing. Normally we wouldn’t explicitly condone the idea of besmirching the showpiece occasion of the English football calendar with the sight of two curmudgeons enjoying a bicker-slam. But tomorrow’s game, all things considered, is going to need all the spice it can get. In any case, the president of the FA isn’t going to be there. He’s off to a wedding. Had you not heard?

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