The same weekend that college basketball determined its Final Four, English soccer also established its semifinalists for the FA Cup. We still have the rest of the Premier League season to play out, but the four clubs left in this tournament are looking at crunch time well before that’s over.
FA Cup winners
Nico O’Reilly
The homegrown Manchester City youth midfielder continues to impress in this competition, with one assist and one hockey assist in his team’s win over a Bournemouth side built to counter City’s possession-based approach. The kid just turned 20 last week, and any youth movement on City’s part should probably include him.
Marcus Rashford
It’s a shame he had to leave his boyhood club at Manchester United, but he has found a rich vein of form at Aston Villa. He scored two goals in Villa’s win at Preston North End, and now his club have the easier semifinal against Crystal Palace while Manchester City and Nottingham Forest have to fight it out in the other semi.
Eberechi Eze
Scored one goal and assisted on another during Crystal Palace’s big win over Fulham, and he almost scored what would have been the goal of the tournament when his dipping shot from way out hit the crossbar.
Matz Sels
Nottingham Forest have now won three straight FA Cup ties on penalties, thanks in no small part to their Belgian keeper. You can argue that Brighton went all wobbly in the shootout, but it was Sels who saved spot kicks by Jack Hinshelwood and Diego Gómez that would have gone in had he not been there. Forest’s win came with key attackers Anthony Elanga and Callum Hudson-Odoi left behind in Nottingham, and now the Trees can still dream of lifting the trophy for the first time since 1959.
FA Cup losers
The Championship
Preston’s loss means only Premier League teams are left in the tournament. If this is the stage in March Madness where the Cinderellas are typically rooted out, the same is true for the FA Cup. Too bad for the neutrals.
Home teams
So much for home-field advantage. The host teams lost all four of the quarterfinal matches. Palace and Forest are hosting the semis in four weeks’ time, and they’ll hope that the trend doesn’t hold through then.