Scottish FA Cup

The Scottish FA Cup is Scotland’s main national cup competition and is the second oldest cup competition in the world after the English FA Cup.

Because the Scottish Cup involves teams of all standards playing against each other it offers the chance of smaller teams from amateur or junior leagues becoming “giant killers” by defeating a side from the SPL. Famous giant killings include Inverness Caledonian Thistle’s 3-1 victory over John Barnes’ Celtic side in 2000 and when Celtic lost 2-1 to Clyde on Roy Keane’s debut in 2006.

Despite their relatively recent history of being victims of lower league sides, Celtic have won more Scottish Cup titles (34) than any other side since the competition was founded in 1874.

The Old Firm sides have dominated Scottish League football for decades now and the same is true for the Scottish Cup. The 2006 final between Hearts and Gretna was the first final in nine years that didn’t feature either of the Glasgow giants.

Because the format of the tournament is a straight knockout, all the smaller teams  see it as their best chance of silverware and up their game for matches against bigger sides, especially against Rangers or Celtic.

Winners of the trophy get to represent Scotland in the Europa League despite the Scottish Football Association’s best efforts to award the place to the highest ranked SPL team who had not qualified for Europe already. The SFA’s reasoning behind this was the fact that the winners of the Scottish FA Cup had often already qualified for European competition and the cup runners-up were awarded the spot. Teams such as Gretna, Queen of the South and Dunfermline were seemingly not suitable to represent Scotland in the UEFA Cup (now the Europa League). Their poor performances in the UEFA Cup showed that the SFA may have been correct.

Betting on individual games in the Scottish FA Cup is popular as the odds on Celtic or Rangers claiming the title are typically very short.  Rangers are the current holders of the trophy and are second favourites this year, just behind bitter rivals Celtic. In the past decade Rangers have five cup victories, Celtic have four and Heart of Midlothian won it once.

Betting odds on Scottish FA Cup Winner 2009/10