Looking Ahead to the FA Cup Third Round On US Television

Without a doubt, the third round of the FA Cup is one of the highlights of the calendar year for football supporters. It’s a golden opportunity to see the giants of football compete against amateur teams made up of people with ordinary professions such as postmen, labourers, accountants and policemen, etc.

In previous years, there have been so many upsets including Hereford beating Newcastle United, Sutton beating Coventry, Wrexham defeating Arsenal and the list goes on and on.

Sadly this FA Cup, there are far fewer non-league teams left in the third round than usual so the enticing David versus Goliath ties are very few in number. But the good news, for those of us in the United States, is that we’ve got more FA Cup games than usual on television thanks to Fox Soccer Channel and Setanta Sports sharing the rights.

Here’s the TV schedule for the FA Cup games for the weekend of January 2-3, 2010:

Saturday, January 2:

Bristol City v Cardiff, 7:45am, Setanta US
Middlesbrough v Manchester City, 10am, Fox Soccer Channel
Sunderland v Barrow, 10am, Setanta US
MK Dons v Burnley, Noon [delayed], Fox Soccer Channel
Reading v Liverpool, 12:15pm, Setanta US

Sunday, January 3:

Manchester United v Leeds United, 8am, Fox Soccer Channel
West Ham v Arsenal, 11:10am, Setanta US
Tranmere v Wolves, 1pm, Fox Soccer Channel

Out of all of the above games, the biggest game is Manchester United against arch-rivals Leeds United. I can guarantee that the Leeds players will be up for this match as they were when they played Liverpool in the Carling Cup a few months ago (and almost won).

In addition to the FA Cup matches on television, the FA website will be streaming two games online via their website at http:\/\/www.thefa.com/ I’m not sure whether they’ll be blocked for visitors viewing the streams from outside the UK, but here are the games they’ll be showing:

Saturday, January 2: