You've reached your free article limit. Soccer America Pro members may read, share and comment on all articles from these paid premium newsletters. Manchester City overwhelmed Burton Albion by a colossal 9-0 scoreline. Now, this was not any old game, this was the Carabao Cup no, I have no idea what a carabao is, maybe an animal, maybe a car, perhaps a soft drink. You may wonder exactly how such a vital game, at such a vital stage of fantasy world cup 2019 prestigious tournament, could possibly produce such a lopsided score. Which will no doubt lead to you wondering about Burton Albion. Who on earth are they. Burton is a small town near where I spent some of my early years -- population now around 60,000 depending on where you draw the boundaries. Back in those distant boyhood days I knew it only as a dull place --- it was celebrated only for its breweries and its beer. Promotion to League 1 came in 2015, then on to the Championship next stop the Premier League. The success was not continued and the Brewers slipped down to League 1 3rd division where they are currently in 9th fantasy world cup 2019. They arrived -- certainly unexpectedly -- at the Carabao semifinal by eliminating Shrewsbury, Aston Villa, Burnley, Nottingham Forest and Middlesbrough. Only Shrewsbury plays in League 1; Aston Villa, Notts Forest and Middlesbrough are in the Championship one league upwhile Burnley is a Premier League team. Burton traveled to Manchester and got utterly humiliated. You can be sure, when you see a winning margin as large as nine goals, that it could have been more. For a start, one might want to fantasy world cup 2019 the Manchester City team selection. Six days earlier, City had played Liverpool in an absolutely crucial game. Of the 11 starters in that must-win game, only two Leroy Sane and David Silva started against Burton. Leaving the strong suspicion that Pep Guardiola does not take the Carabao Cup too seriously. It is possible -- though, I think not likely -- that neither of those suspicions is true. But does any blame lie with Guardiola. Winning the Carabao is not a big deal for him he won it last year, anyway. Guardiola evidently felt a bit guilty about that -- announcing after the game that his team had shown respect for Burton. His reasoning: that his team had never relaxed against Burton or taken pity on them. I mentioned earlier that the scoreline probably broke some records. Significantly, that was a win in the Spanish Cup competition, the Copa del Rey. Not a coincidence, for cup competitions insist that pitting big teams against small teams -- with the possibility of a David-beats-Goliath upset -- is what makes them special. They have a point, of course they do. Or they did, once upon a time. Big money has upset things. The skill gap between big and small teams read rich and poor teams is now embarrassingly large. Goliath factor looks more mythical than real. The idea of a knockout tournament for all-comers, climaxing in a grand final remains attractive. It hardly needs another one. That the Carabao Cup is one cup competition too many seems pretty clear. But it is not just the Carabao that can come up with horrendous mis-matches like Man City vs Burton Albion. And every time they do happen, they devalue the very idea of an open cup. A 9-0 mauling is, for most fans, painful to watch. This was as easy as it comes for Man City. No doubt Burton, by refusing to play a stolidly defensive game, simplified matters for Man City. So should Burton be complimented for committing suicide. We thought it could have been more. We didn't do too much wrong. With two or three of the goals we could have done more but we didn't do too badly. Meaningless as far as the tournament goes, that is. It does represent a pay day Burton -- which is important, no. Man City, to continue showing respect, should field its strongest 11. In short, the game is likely to take on the atmosphere of a friendly. Really, the only thing to be learned from a massive mismatch like the Man City-Burton game is that a lot more should be done to ensure that such games do not crop up. The cup formation is the chief culprit. The growth of super-rich clubs with their talent-laden benches has seriously undermined the lovely, but naive idea of an everyone-plays-everyone format. The one cup tournament that works brilliantly -- the World Cup -- does so largely because the entire sport, worldwide, is willing to grant it priority over all other competitions. Even so, it does feature hapless mismatches. As for cup tournaments at the club level, the idea of abolishing them suggests itself, but does not look like a workable idea. If they are here to stay, they need to adjust to the modern soccer world. That means, basically, finding a way to avoid embarrassing mismatches, perhaps of arranging things so that money does not count quite as powerfully as it does elsewhere in the sport. That sounds like creating another fantasy version of the sport. Goliath dream at the heart of the cup experience was always fantasy.
