The FA Cup final is on Saturday at Wembley, the showpiece finale of soccer’s oldest cup competition. Two Premier League giants, Manchester City and Chelsea, will go toe-to-toe, and considering the way their respective seasons have played out — City with a Carabao Cup win under their belt and a faint chance at the Premier League title, Chelsea stuck in mid-table and facing another coaching search this summer — victory on Saturday will go a long way for whomever wins.
So, ahead of the fun, Rob Dawson and Julien Laurens break down the action in both locker rooms and make their predictions.
The view from Manchester City
With the Premier League title seemingly slipping away, attention at Manchester City has turned to the future.
There’s a growing feeling at the Etihad Stadium that Pep Guardiola is ready to call it quits after 10 years at the club. If that is the case, then the FA Cup final against Chelsea might be the last chance for the 55-year-old to add to his glittering trophy haul.
He’s already won the Carabao Cup this season, defeating Arsenal, and a domestic cup double will be in his sights. It was telling that even with faint life left in the title race, he left Erling Haaland, Rayan Cherki and Jérémy Doku on the bench for the 3-0 win over Crystal Palace on Wednesday. They should all be back in the team at Wembley on Saturday.
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If we are in the final weeks of City’s Guardiola era, then the FA Cup will be important for another reason. Guardiola might be coming to the end, but this is a relatively new City team. Most of the group which won the treble in 2023 have gone and been replaced by new players like Nico O’Reilly, Marc Guéhi, Antoine Semenyo and Gianluigi Donnarumma.
Guardiola has said that the new batch need to learn the art of winning — just like Éderson, Kyle Walker, Ilkay Gündogan and Kevin De Bruyne did before them. Victory over Arsenal in the Carabao Cup final has helped, though picking up another trophy against Chelsea at Wembley would be another step in the right direction.
Guardiola is well aware that winning becomes a habit and lifting the Carabao Cup and FA Cup can act as a platform to go on to bigger and better things.
“There’s a hunger within the club of wanting to win,” O’Reilly said in the exclusive interview with ESPN ahead of the final. “Obviously, we went through a difficult season last season when we didn’t win anything. It wasn’t a good season for us and we didn’t enjoy not lifting trophies.
“Bouncing back from the that, winning the Carabao Cup, potentially winning the FA Cup and being in the title race, it’s more enjoyable for us as players. We want to be in these situations.
“We’re quite a young team. We’ve got some experienced leaders in there as well, who help us out massively. There are a lot of new players, young players. Hopefully we can go on to do some great things over the years.”
Guardiola still has a year left on his contract at City, and some within the club are clinging to the hope that he might decide he’s got one more season left. After all, another Premier League title doesn’t seem too far away, and there could also be another Champions League in the not too distant future. But if Guardiola does hand over to someone else in the summer — potentially former Chelsea boss Enzo Maresca — then he will leave behind a team in good shape to carry on what he started.
Trips to Wembley have become routine for City under Guardiola. So have trophies. The 2026 FA Cup final against Chelsea may be remembered as the final act of his incredible spell in charge. — Rob Dawson
The view from Chelsea
Back in August when this season started, most Chelsea fans, players, directors and owners would have have settled for a place in the FA Cup final come the end of May. The Blues have a history of winning trophies — like the first edition of the new and improved FIFA Club World Cup last summer, or the UEFA Europa Conference League a year ago — and feeding this winning DNA is always good, even just with an FA Cup. However, no one would have ever thought that this final would be the only positive in a tumultuous season.
Three managers, as many defeats in the Premier League as victories, a humiliating early exit from the UEFA Champions League, a run of six league defeats in a row for the first time in 30 years, sitting ninth in the table with two games to go and players publicly criticising the way the club is being run: Chelsea have had an absolute nightmare. The club is seemingly broken from top to bottom with no direction, no identity and losses in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
Yet, all is not lost! Somehow, even in the middle of this existential crisis, the FA Cup could salvage this campaign and actually get the Blues into Europe. (They won’t mind that it’s the Europa League, something their league position will not afford them.) Fans would still feel ashamed of their club and would still want the American owners out, but at least there would be a bit of light at the end of a long dark tunnel that’s lasted the entire season.
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Andrey Santos says ‘anything can happen’ ahead of FA Cup Final
Ahead of their clash in the FA Cup Final against Manchester City, Chelsea’s Andrey Santos tells ESPN he is expecting a “hard game from a top team.”
Calum McFarlane will lead the team out at Wembley and the irony is that this is the second time he will face Pep Guardiola and City this season as the Chelsea interim manager. Back in January, after the sacking of Enzo Maresca (clearly a mistake) and before the appointment of Liam Rosenior (clearly another mistake), the U21 head coach took charge of the first team at the Etihad as the Blues battled to a well-earned 1-1 draw, and a better xG than the home side on the day (1.85 to 1.02).
McFarlane then lost his next game on the bench, at Fulham in a local derby (2-1), while he also didn’t win either of his two other league fixtures in charge (3-1 against Forest, 1-1 at Liverpool). Even in the FA Cup semifinal, his team was fortunate to beat Leeds (1-0).
The interim coach needs something special on Saturday, whether it comes from Enzo Fernández, Cole Palmer, João Pedro or a spirited team performance in which everybody plays for each other. Chelsea are the underdogs, which is maybe a role that suits them in this case.
FA Cup finals have been a bit of a curse for the Londoners in recent seasons, with three losses in their last three visits to Wembley in this competition (against Liverpool in 2022, Leicester in 2021 and Arsenal in 2020 during Covid). Their last FA Cup triumph was back in 2018 against Manchester United.
This time, they need a bit of magic of the Cup to work in their favor if they want to save their season a little. Otherwise, another defeat and this season will go down in history as one of the worse in a very long time. — Julien Laurens
Predictions!
Man City 3-1 Chelsea: City have got a settled team and are playing well. Chelsea, on the other hand, are all over the place. — Dawson
Man City 2-1 Chelsea: I think this is a tricky game for Guardiola and City, as the league title remains the priority and they will play four games in the space of 12 days to end the season. However, they will still be too strong for a Chelsea team in poor form. — Laurens
