Leicester City win first FA Cup thanks to Youri Tielemans screamer and late Var escape

[ASFN Admin]

Leicester midfielder Tielemans scores Cup final classic from long range Ben Chilwell thought he had equalised in the 89th minute but was judged offside after Var review The roar at Wembley Stadium was for an FA Cup final-winning goal for the ages from Youri Tielemans and the visceral reaction it let loose across this long-silent game felt like a much-anticipated reawakening: football as it should be is back at last. This was the final when 21,000 supporters returned to the stands to give the game back its voice, and the drama to go with it was quite exquisite. For Chelsea, a great FA Cup force, this was the second straight Wembley final when they had to accept second best, beaten by a club who have defied in recent years the notion of what is possible. To their first league championship from 2016, Leicester City added their first FA Cup in 137 years, and they did so with a second-half goal of astonishing quality from their Belgian midfielder Tielemans. It might not get them a place in any European Super League, but it did mean that the first major event with significant supporter numbers in more than a year was an electrifying occasion when the notional underdogs defied English football’s notional elite. Tielemans’s goal was not the only moment when the great roar of Wembley would rise in the throats of both sets of supporters. The game would twist twice more, first when an own goal by veteran Leicester captain Wes Morgan, on the pitch as a substitute in his first game since December, seemed to have given Chelsea an 89th-minute equaliser by deflecting a loose ball into his own goal. This was Chelsea’s moment of reprieve, or so they thought, but the noise from the Leicester end when the Var Chris Kavanagh conveyed an offside for Chelsea’s Ben Chilwell in the build-up was just as fierce. This wonderful afternoon had it all, if one could look past a rather mediocre game. The celebrations at the end for Leicester seemed to mark a moment of renewal for the return of fans to games and the start again of football feeling like football once more. For Brendan Rodgers, thrown in the air by his players in celebration, this was a great triumph – he got his team right. Now he has to do that once more when they meet again with Chelsea on Tuesday for a league game that will have a major say on the Champions League places.

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