FA Cup or Champions League qualification – which means more?

Nottingham Forest, Aston Villa, Crystal Palace, and Manchester City are gearing up for the FA Cup semi-finals at Wembley.

Three of the four, Forest, Villa, and City, are also chasing top-five Premier League victories to earn a Champions League spot next year.

Which is more important, winning the FA Cup or qualifying for the Champions League?

You can watch the first semi-final of Crystal Palace’s match on Saturday at 17:15 BST on BBC One, iPlayer, BBC Sport website, and app.

For a place in the final, Nottingham Forest will face Manchester City at 16:30 the following day.

A top-five finish in the Premier League guarantees at least eight games in Europe’s elite club competition, whereas the winners of English football’s showpiece final at Wembley on May are guaranteed a significant trophy as well as a place in the Europa League next season.

Which is more crucial, though?

Former Manchester City defender Nedum Onuoha claims that “the chance of a trophy is enormous, regardless of anything else going on.”

“Lifting silverware creates truly iconic moments.

The FA Cup this year has had its fair share of surprises, which will give this weekend’s semi-finals a somewhat unfamiliar look.

Record 14-time Olympiades Arsenal and Liverpool both lost in the third round, while last year’s champions Manchester United lost on penalties to Fulham at Old Trafford in the fifth round, while the previous year’s winners came out in the third round and the Premier League champions-in-waiting Liverpool also lost in the fourth round.

Only four of the four remaining teams have lost the FA Cup, with Crystal Palace the only exception.

Although Manchester City has won two of its previous six championship matches, Aston Villa and Nottingham Forest haven’t won the prestigious trophy in more than 60 years.

Villa has won the FA Cup twice, but they last did it in 1956-57.

Since 1958-1959, Forest, who is now two-time champions, has won the European Cup twice.

A million people watch the FA Cup final on a worldwide television network, and the winners of the event are presented with a significant trophy in front of their national stadium.

West Ham, Tottenham, Cardiff, and Preston won the FA Cup game for the first time this season, earning Aston Villa a total of £910, 000 in prize money. For their five Champions League league-phase victories this year, they won £8.85 million.

Villa, Forest, City, or Crystal Palace will only receive £2 million in prize money if they win the FA Cup final next month, despite earning clubs an additional £9.27 million each.

Forest’s final game in the top club competition in European football ended in October 1980, when it was renamed the Champions League before going on to become known as the European Cup.

Nuno Espirito Santo’s team is currently fourth in the Premier League with a three-point lead over Chelsea with five games to play.

Champions League football would offer a much better opportunity for laying a solid foundation for future success, according to Forest fan Ben Smith, who wants to be an FA Cup romantic.

Simon, a fellow Forest fan, has a different opinion.

“Yes, European football brings in money,” he says. But he claims that a cup’s success is unchanging.

Look at the joy of Newcastle fans, who will be more fond of their achievements than the first time they placed in the top four.

Unai Emery’s side must finish in the top five to qualify for the Champions League after losing 5-4 on aggregate to Paris St-Germain in the quarter-finals.

They are currently seventh, two points behind fifth after playing one more game than the three rival teams that are just ahead of them. In contrast to their competitors, their goal difference is also lower.

Villa are only two wins away from winning the first major trophy since Brian Little’s team defeated Leeds United in the 1996 League Cup final.

Do they prioritize winning the FA Cup over placing first in the top five?

After his team lost to Manchester City by a 2-1 on Tuesday, Villa manager Emery declared, “Of course, the Premier League is our priority.”

We are in the top five of the Premier League.

More than 30 000 Villa fans are expected to attend Wembley to see them face Palace this weekend in their first FA Cup semi-final since ten years.

Emery continued, “Playing in the semi-finals is special. We put in a lot of effort into it. We must now move forward.

The FA Cup semi-final, according to Onuoha, is Villa’s biggest game of the season.

We saw with Newcastle what it can mean for supporters to win silverware, he continued, noting that it can sometimes be something special.

Villa wants to try to win the trophy, they say. It would be easy to argue that it is their biggest game so far this season.

In the current era of the financial viability of Champions League qualification, I believe it to be a possibility.

The players will be aware of the game’s massiveness, and all those fans who travel to Wembley will be aware of it.

Amazingly, this is Manchester City’s seventh successive FA Cup appearance.

They then advanced to the finals, winning two of them in 2019 and 2023.

However, City and Pep Guardiola’s decision to leave the Champions League would be a huge blow, as the latter said “we haven’t done anything special with just one” after being crowned champions of Europe for the first time in 2023.

City leads Chelsea by four points, which is third place, with just one game left to play.

Onuoha noted that Guardiola has spent a lot of time this year highlighting how effective this team has been in recent years, including reaching seven FA Cup semi-finals in a row.

He has been more resolute about how to describe his team because “many teams have not reached seven in their entire history.”

He wants to make sure that people are aware of where he is from, where the club is from, how effective they have been historically, and how he still believes in the team.

In the past, City did not make it to the Champions League, as did Portuguese midfielder Matheus Nunes, who claimed qualification was top of the list in the final weeks of the season.

After the midweek league win over Villa, Nunes said, “It’s important to go and win the semi-final, but I think our main goal is to try to qualify for the Champions League.”