Leicester City will today start the defense of the FA Cup as they welcome Watford to the King Power Stadium
An all-Premier League FA Cup third-round tie takes place at the King Power Stadium this afternoon, as defending champions Leicester City play host to Watford.
The Foxes begin the long and arduous defence of their crown on home soil, while the Hornets have bowed out in the third round two seasons in a row.
As if their historic 2015-16 Premier League title win was not enough, Leicester once again defied the odds to lift the FA Cup in the 2020-21 season, with Youri Tielemans’s thunderbolt of an effort sinking Chelsea in front of a depleted Wembley crowd.
The images of Aiyawatt Srivaddhanaprabha joining the celebrations on the field warmed the hearts of football fans across the globe in what was a fitting tribute to his late father, but the quest for back-to-back FA Cup titles begins now.
Aiming to follow in the footsteps of Arsenal’s 2014 and 2015 winners, Leicester are well-placed to kick off their FA Cup journey on the right foot, as Brendan Rodgers’s COVID-hit squad came up trumps against a near full-strength Liverpool in their final game of 2021 thanks to Ademola Lookman’s strike.
The Foxes were due to open 2022 with a fixture against Norwich City before the game was called off due to the Canaries’ coronavirus cluster, and that encounter would have certainly helped them build on their measly tally of two wins from their last seven in all competitions.
However, Leicester are enjoying a four-game winning run at home across all tournaments – averaging three goals per game in that hot streak – but they will be wary of another early exit following Newport County’s famous third-round win in 2018-19.
Claudio Ranieri’s stint at Chelsea did not yield an FA Cup victory, and given the form his Watford side are currently in, it will be a tall order for the Hornets to produce the shock of all shocks in the 2021-22 edition.
Watford memorably made it all the way to the final in the 2018-19 season before being comfortably swept aside by Manchester City, and since then they have suffered back-to-back third-round exits to Tranmere Rovers and Manchester United.
December was a truly forgettable month for Watford, who lost all five of their Premier League games in that month to drop ever closer to danger, and Ranieri may prioritise the relegation scrap over a highly unlikely shot at silverware.
Watford travel to an injury-hit Leicester having lost their last three away games and are hardly in the healthiest shape themselves, but stranger things have happened in this competition notorious for giant killings season after season.
Leicester put four past Watford in a 4-2 victory when the sides met in the Premier League back in November, and while the Hornets tend to fare well in this fixture at Vicarage Road, they have lost their last six games versus the FA Cup holders at the King Power.
AFCON, Copa del Rey, Coppa Italia Live on StarTimes
January means football on StarTimes as prized competitions have been lined-up for football fans, with some exclusive to StarTimes.
Soccer fiestas lined up this January include the Africa Cup of Nations, Spanish Copa del Rey, La Liga, Coppa Italia, Super Coppa Italia, and German Bundesliga.
The 33rd edition of the Africa Cup of Nations organised by CAF will be played in Cameroon between January 9 and February 6.
StarTimes will broadcast all 52 matches live and in full high-definition through eight sports channels as well as streaming service StarTimes ON.
StarTimes has been awarded pay-television and OTT media rights to the tournament across all sub-Saharan Africa territories in English, Portuguese, and local African languages.
Philippe Zou, StarTimes Content Operation Center Director, said: “StarTimes has made a strategic priority to support African football and bring it to fans across the continent. We are honoured to partner with the CAF again, following the successful broadcasting of the 2019 AFCON and the 2020 CHAN. To us, there is no better way to start 2022 than to watch top African players compete for the continental crown.”
The TotalEnergies 2021 Africa Cup of Nations will be played by 24 teams in five cities (Douala, Yaoundé, Bafoussam, Garoua, and Limbe) across Cameroon, with Algeria as the defending champions.
Several world-class players will be seen in action during the four-week-long tournament.
African football fans will be able to see all the best action of the Africa Cup of Nations on StarTimes’ World Football channel as Africa’s leading digital-TV operator will be showing the games live and in HD.
Africa’s gain during that time is often Europe’s loss as clubs like Liverpool, Manchester City, PSG, AC Milan, and Bayern Munich will be without some of their star players as they do duty for their respective national teams.
As a result, the competition has not been without its controversy, but all of that will be forgotten when the matches get underway.
Although the tournament has been expanded to 24 teams for the first time in its long history, the pre-tournament favourites comprise the usual suspects.
Cameroon have already won the showpiece of African football five times and as hosts are certainly in the running to add another title.
Coached by former Portuguese international Toni Conceição, the Les Lions Indomptables squad blends veteran players like goalkeeper André Onana, André-Frank Zambo Anguissa, Vincent Aboubakar, and Eric Maxim Choupo-Moting with youngsters like Bordeaux’s Jean Onana and Ignatius Ganago, who plays for Lens.
The hosts have been paired in Group A with Burkina Faso, Cape Verde and Ethiopia. With the four best-placed third-ranked teams also advancing to the round of the last 16, it would be a huge surprise if the hosts do not make it into the knock-out stage.
The holders, Algeria, potentially have a much tougher task. They are in Group E, together with Equatorial Guinea, Sierra Leone and Côte d’Ivoire, who have a formidable squad, headlined by: Franck Kessié, Nicolas Pépé, Wilfried Zaha and Sébastien Haller.
Three-time champions Nigeria’s preparations were thrown into disarray when German coach Gernot Rohr was dismissed shortly before the start of the tournament.
Jose Peseiro has been named as a replacement, but interim coach Augustine Eguavoen will be in charge at the Nations Cup, with the Portuguese coach acting as an observer.
The Super Eagles face Guinea Bissau, Sudan, and Egypt in Group D, with the Pharaohs undoubtedly being the biggest threat to Nigeria’s hopes of topping the group.
Other teams in the mix to land Africa’s greatest national team prize are Ghana and Senegal, who are coached by former national team player Aliou Cissé, who captained Les Lions de la Téranga to the runner-up position in 2002 and coached the side in 2019, when they lost 1-0 to Algeria in the final.
Cissé can call on the likes of Sadio Mané, who is one of three Liverpool stars doing duty in Cameroon. Mané and team-mate Mo Salah scored for Liverpool in their 2-2 draw against Chelsea on the weekend, before jetting off to AFCON.
Liverpool manager Jürgen Klopp has come to terms with missing three important players. “We knew three would be qualified and be there and we knew that at least two of them will go pretty far in the tournament. Can you be prepared for something like that, properly, perfectly? Like a one-for-one replacement for Sadio, a replacement for Mo, one replacement for Naby Keita? That’s tricky in each situation,” he said.
