Brighton’s success cannot last – they must seize their chance at FA Cup glory

Four decades on, it remains one of the most famous bits of FA Cup final commentary: “And Smith must score,” declared Peter Jones. But Smith didn’t score and, in a world of many Smiths, Gordon Smith, who had actually already scored in the 1983 FA Cup final, is the Smith of “and Smith must score” fame.

And so it finished Brighton & Hove Albion 2 Manchester United 2. Powered by Bryan Robson, United won the replay 4-0. They have won 46 trophies since then. Brighton have been champions of the second, third and fourth tiers in the meantime, but they carry less prestige than winning the Champions League.

So if a Wembley rematch on Sunday feels particularly evocative to those of a sufficient vintage to remember 1983, a year when, like this, United ended a six-season wait for silverware, it has a broader importance. For Brighton, the semi-final on Sunday is another staging post in their remarkable recovery after the traumatic times in the 1990s when they almost lost their Football League status and did become homeless.

They were semi-finalists in 2019, too, but the context has changed now. Then the Albion side limped to safety, the cup run not enough to keep Chris Hughton’s job. While they did go down in 1983, they were a Gary Bailey save away from winning the FA Cup. And this feels like their best opportunity in 40 years to secure a first major trophy in their history; potentially, too, their best for quite some time to come.

It is uncontroversial to call this side, on course for Brighton’s highest finish, set for comfortably their record top-flight points and goals totals, with two wins each against Liverpool and Chelsea and a victory at Old Trafford this season, their greatest ever. It is also evident the footballing landscape has shifted since Brighton almost won the FA Cup: three years earlier, second-division West Ham had; four and five years later, Coventry and Wimbledon sprang surprises in the final. Now, glory tends to be a fiefdom of a private members’ club. Most other teams, including Hughton’s Brighton, are shut out.

But this Albion are in a sweet spot. They lack the profile, the trophy cabinet, the supersized budget and the global fame of the superpowers. But, looking at performances and players on the pitch, and they are one of the best teams in the country: better than Liverpool and Chelsea this season and, in a rare case of the league table lying, better than Spurs now. They have the fifth most points since the World Cup, the third most goals and about £80m of money from Chelsea when, in manager Roberto de Zerbi and left-back Pervis Estupinan, they appeared to have found upgrades on Graham Potter and Marc Cucurella, who both floundered at Stamford Bridge.

But there is a sense that it cannot last; an immediacy that makes this a one-off opportunity, Brighton’s finest chance. They are the market leaders at succession planning, but they will need to be. Their recruitment looks too good for their own good now. Because, surely, this group will not stay together.

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They are fuelled by the engine room of the team and there are few better midfields than Moises Caicedo and Alexis Mac Allister; Liverpool are eyeing both, United may be and Arsenal submitted a £60m bid for the Ecuadorian in January. If it started to feel Yves Bissouma would leave Brighton, only for him to vanish at Antonio Conte’s Tottenham, Caicedo and Mac Allister are superior again. The temptation is to say a World Cup winner won’t stay at Brighton, though there is no precedent because Albion don’t usually have World Cup winners. The probability, though, is that savvy traders will end up with two huge profits. And if Brighton’s record suggests the money will be reinvested wisely, the difficulty will be finding players of their calibre.

The same may be said of the manager. De Zerbi has propelled himself into discussions about virtually every vacancy. By taking Potter’s technically adept, tactically versatile team and adding incision, excitement and goals, he has seemed to put himself on the fast track to the top. The Italian has an attacking possession game – Brighton have the third-highest share of the ball this season – and the high pressing tactics to suggest his ethos is one virtually every other club wants.

Whether others, such as the revelations Kaoru Mitoma and Evan Ferguson, have proved too good for Brighton’s chances of keeping them for the long term remains to be seen. But there is plenty of proof that the established elite tend to react to the emergence of upstart challengers by casting covetous glances and raiding them for their top talents. It is a reason why, increasingly, the trophies tend to be concentrated among the same few clubs. It wasn’t the case in 1983, when Brighton eliminated the defending league champions Liverpool and Manchester City. Now they have knocked out Liverpool and may yet have an FA Cup final against City. And, 40 years on from Smith, it seems as though the group of Caicedo, Mac Allister and De Zerbi have one shot at winning something.