Liverpool v Wimbledon

The FA Cup is widely regarded as the most important domestic cup competition in the world of Football (or for my American friends "Soccer"). It's a trophy that has a prestigious history dating back around 140 years and includes several hundred club teams through out the English Football system. It covers not only teams in the Premier League, the Football League and the Football Conference but also way down to the lower tiers of English football.

Not only is it such a historical and open competition but it is also a world famous competition shown in over 100 countries to a viewing figure in the 100 of millions. It has everything fans could want, top teams, a sense of randomness, upsets, history, viewing base, prestige and a nice shiny trophy at the end of it. However not all upsets are as notable as the 1988 FA Cup Final which saw the daddy of all upsets.

One one side we had the all conquering Liverpool who, during the 1980's were the premier club in England winning pretty much everything. The League title was repeatedly won by the Anfield out fit during the decade who filled up their trophy cabinet with numerous other trophies such as an Fa Cup (1986), several League Cups (1981-1984), several Charity shields (1980, 1982, 1986), victory in the solitary Football League Super Cup (1986) and 2 European Cups (1981, 1984). They were pretty clearly the team of the decade in regards to English football.

On the other side of the pitch you had Wimbledon, a club who had a simple style of play and a team full of practical jokers. A little over 20 years early Wimbledon were an amateur side and in fact in 1963 they claimed the FA Amateur Cup (having previously been runners up 3 times). Many fans still thought of the team as amateurs despite the fact they had been promoted to then First Division (the top flight of English football) from the Fourth Division after 3 promotions in 4 years.

The match started well for Liverpool with John Aldridge having an early chance that caused the Wimbledon defense to make a last gasp challenger. Soon afterwards John Barnes came close forcing Dave Beasant to make an excellent save. It seemed like it would only be a matter of time before Liverpool break the deadlock. Surprisingly however it was Wimbledon that took the lead in the 37th minute as Lawrie Sanchez flicked in a Dennis Wise free kick. From then on however it was almost all Liverpool as the Scouser's looked to equalise. Alan Hansen forced Beasant into action later in the first half before John Aldridge got a penalty early in the second half, up to this point a penalty had never been saved in an FA Cup final but Beasant made history and denied Aldridge.

Despite some sustained pressure Liverpool couldn't beat Beasant as Wimbledon secured their first, and only, major professional trophy in what is widely regarded as the biggest FA Cup Final shock of all time.

Picture courtesy of Carlos yo

Rafael Nadal v Lukas Rosol

Upsets in Tennis do happen on a semi regular basis, especially amongst the lower level players but amongst the elite they are incredibly rare. The top Tennis players today are just that much ahead of the rest that upset's, especially at Grandslams, come around once in a blue moon. When they happen however they are notable and deserve to be treat like massive news, at least in the sporting world.

As we all know Tennis has 4 Grandslams a year. The first of is the Australia Open held on a Plexicushion (hard) surface, the second is held on Clay in France at Roland Garros, the third is held at Wimbledon on Grass and the final is the US Open held on DecoTurf (hard).

As we went into Wimbledon 2012 we had already seen both Novak Djokovic (Australian Open) and Rafael Nadal (Roland Garros) claim a slam each as the two men battled for the #1 ranking in the world. Those two were were seen as the top contenders for Wimbledon, with former 6 time champion Rodger Federer also seen as being in contention alongside Britain's own Andy Murray.

What no one expected was that one of the supposed "big 4" would fail to at least make it to the quarter finals. At the quarter final stage the likes of Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, Tomas Berdych, David Ferrer and Janko Tipsarevic were expected to at least put up a fight with the big 4 with maybe one of them scoring a victory. Amazingly however Rafael Nadal didn't even get beyond the second round as he was stunned in the biggest upset of the Tennis year by the unknown Lukas Rosol.

The 26 year old Rosol was ranked around #100 and seen as early round fodder for Nadal. Prior to 2012 Rosol had never even made it past the 1st qualifying stage at Wimbledon, and had in fact only made it to the main draw in 4 of his previous 18 attempts at Grandslams. Despite having been on the circuit for a few years Rosol had never been ranked in the top 60 and actually had a notable losing career record.

Rosol made an unexpectedly solid start against Nadal taking the Spaniard to a tie-breaker in the opening round before finally losing  the tie breaker 11-9. This should really have set alarm bells ringing around the Tennis world that Rosol wasn't just coming into the match to make up the numbers. It wasn't that Nadal was playing bad but Rosol was playing excellently and was really holding his own.

You could see that Rosol's confidence was growing as the match went on and in set 2 the Czech exceeded all expectation and not equaled Nadal but actually won the set 6-4. The Czech then surprisingly claimed the 3rd set to take a 2-1 lead. He was pushing Nadal to the limit but still it was expected that Nadal would fight back and that's just what the long haired Spaniard did as he claimed the 4th set 6-2.

Going into the final set some on forums were saying that Rosol had bottled it and Nadal had finally started to show his class. Instead the loss of the 4th set seemed to set Rosol back to his best as he remarkably held his nerve to clinch the 5th and final set 6-4, winning the match 6-7, 6-4, 6-4, 2-6, 6-4.

Before the match Nadal was 1/100, a nailed on certainty, he had moved to 1/250 at one point (if not even shorter odds) it was all but certain that Nadal would win but Rosol's serve (which scored an amazing 22 aces!) refused to yield and we had what many will remember as the greatest Tennis upset in recent memory. 

Sadly for Rosol he was beaten in straight sets in his next match by German Philipp Kohlschreiber (the 27 seed) and then failed to make the US Open losing to Argentinian Guido Pella in the 3rd round of Qualifying.

Picture thanks to Su--May