1999–2000 FA Cup
association football tournament concluding in 2000
The 1999–2000 FA Cup (known as the FA Cup sponsored by AXA for sponsorship reasons) was the 119th staging of the FA Cup. Both the semifinals and final of the competition were played at Wembley Stadium for the last time before reconstruction work began. The competition culminated with the final between Chelsea and Aston Villa. The game was won by a goal from Chelsea's Roberto Di Matteo, giving them a 1–0 victory.
The title holders Manchester United, withdrew from the 1999–2000 competition due to their participation in the 2000 FIFA Club World Championship in South America, to take place in early 2000, thus becoming the first FA Cup winners not to defend their title. Despite this being at the request of the Football Association (FA), who believed the move would boost England's chances of winning the bid to host the 2006 FIFA World Cup, they received criticism from journalists and television pundits. To keep the competition running smoothly, the FA chose to draw one team from among those lower-division teams defeated in the second round to progress as "lucky losers" to the third. Darlington were the team drawn.
The main competition started in November 1999 for clubs from the Football League and Premiership.
Calendar
‡ Manchester United, who were the winners the previous season, did not enter.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “1999–2000 FA Cup” as association football tournament concluding in 2000. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the history & society register because the source frames it as association football tournament concluding in 2000. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 30, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1321334. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1999, 2000 and 2006.
Official terminology may obscure informal participation, dissent or communities documented only indirectly. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.
- Event chronology
- Institutional context
- Locating named record creators
Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “1999–2000 FA Cup”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow 1999–2000 FA Cup primary sources, 1999–2000 FA Cup archive and association research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “1999–2000 FA Cup”?
- Which voices are present, absent or mediated by the institution?
- Who created the surviving record, and for what administrative purpose?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “1999–2000 FA Cup” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.