Manchester City and Southampton met at Wembley Stadium in North West London on Saturday in the FA Cup semifinal, with kickoff set for 12:15pm ET. The game was streamed on + and carried a clear edge for City, who were chasing a domestic treble.
City arrived with momentum and expectation. They had already won the League Cup by beating Arsenal in the final at Wembley, beaten Arsenal again in the league last weekend and gone top of the Premier League table after winning at Burnley in midweek. Even without Josko Gvardiol and Ruben Dias through injury, and with Rodri likely to miss out, City were expected to lean on Nico Gonzalez in central midfield as they tried to move one step closer to a rare clean sweep of domestic honors.
Southampton were trying to spoil that run on the biggest stage of their season. Tonda Eckert’s side came in on a 20-game unbeaten run, had already knocked out Fulham and Arsenal in the previous two rounds and had sealed a playoff spot in the Championship. Almost 40,000 supporters backed them at Wembley after the club requested extra tickets from the FA, a show of force that reflected how far the support had traveled with them.
That backing mattered because Southampton were not only chasing a place in the final; they were chasing history. Their only major trophy remains the 1976 FA Cup, won as a second-tier team, and this group reached Wembley with a chance to move within one match of ending that wait. They did so despite losing Flynn Downes to a retrospective three-game ban after an incident at Swansea City last weekend and Ryan Manning to suspension, with Welington expected to step in at left back. Jack Stephens was also struggling with a calf injury, while Daniel Peretz had been excellent since his January arrival on loan from Bayern Munich.
The contrast in the semifinal was stark: Manchester City, built for the final stretch and now three games from history, against a Southampton side that has turned an unbeaten run and a string of cup upsets into a genuine afternoon at Wembley. What happens next is straightforward and unforgiving — one of them leaves with a shot at the final, and the other is left to measure a season by how close it came.