The FA Cup semi-final draw, conducted on Sunday evening after Leeds United’s dramatic penalty shootout victory over West Ham at the London Stadium, produced two ties that balance historical weight, contemporary narrative and genuine uncertainty in equal measure.
Chelsea face Leeds United in a revival of one of the FA Cup’s most storied rivalries, while Manchester City take on Southampton in a contrast of footballing cultures and league levels that the competition exists precisely to produce.
The Chelsea-Leeds tie reaches back 56 years to the 1970 FA Cup final, widely remembered as one of the dirtiest in the competition’s history and one that required a replay at Old Trafford before Chelsea eventually emerged victorious. Leeds lifted the trophy two years later, and both clubs have deep, complicated histories with the competition.
Joe Cole, watching the draw for TNT Sports, captured the occasion with visible excitement. “It’s a spicy tie. It’s very historic. The Leeds fans who are leaving this stadium will be buzzing — they think they’re coming back to London to face their old rivals,” he said.
For Leeds, reaching the last four for the first time since 1987 is an achievement that transcends any single result in the remainder of their season. A Championship club still in the top flight by the slimmest of margins, Daniel Farke’s side have navigated four FA Cup rounds with a combination of quality football and the kind of resilience that their dramatic penalty win over West Ham demonstrated on Sunday — even if that resilience nearly deserted them when the 2-0 lead slipped away in stoppage time. Pascal Struijk, who scored the decisive penalty in the shootout, acknowledged the dual nature of the afternoon plainly:
“We showed great composure at 2-2 to win on penalties. We need to work on what happened after 2-0, but we’ve got time to prepare for Wembley.”
The Manchester City versus Southampton tie offers a different kind of narrative weight. City are in the semi-finals for a record eighth consecutive season and come into the tie as overwhelming favourites, fresh from a 4-0 dismantling of Liverpool in the quarter-finals.
Southampton are a Championship side chasing promotion while simultaneously maintaining an unbeaten run that stretches back 14 games, having already knocked out Premier League leaders Arsenal at St Mary’s in the quarter-finals. The Saints are drawing deliberate inspiration from Lawrie McMenemy’s 1976 cup winners, also a second-tier side who defeated Manchester United in the final. Fifty years on from that moment, the historical symmetry is not lost on anyone in Hampshire.
What the draw also confirms is the FA Cup’s 2025-26 campaign as one of the more genuinely compelling in recent memory.
Three of the four semi-finalists are Premier League clubs, but the fourth is a Championship side whose season could yet culminate with both promotion and an FA Cup final appearance — a double that would rank among the most remarkable achievements in post-war English football. Winning the FA Cup from the Championship has been done only twice, including by Southampton in 1976, and doing it while simultaneously challenging for promotion would be without precedent.
The semi-finals take place at Wembley on April 25 and 26, with specific kick-off times and dates for each fixture to be confirmed in the coming days. The final is set for Saturday May 16 at Wembley. For Southampton especially, the road to that date carries a significance that goes well beyond football.
