Antoine Semenyo’s journey from Met Police FC to Wembley and a fitting FA Cup final winner

You could be forgiven for missing the name. Once you’ve looked through the entire 18-man matchday squad of Metropolitan Police FC, and the entire 18-man matchday squad of Newport County, the 36th and final name on the list is there: Antoine Semenyo.

Seven and a half years before he was the FA Cup final’s winning goalscorer for Manchester City against Chelsea at Wembley, Semenyo made his FA Cup debut at the somewhat unlikely venue of Imber Court, just outside the borders of London, in Surrey.

Met Police FC are perhaps the least glamorous side in the entire footballing pyramid. Once literally the work team of London’s police force, today they’re a generic non-League outfit, although one still part-funded by the workforce’s lottery system. Perhaps the most notable thing about the club is that their all-time record goalscorer is Mario Russo, father of Arsenal Women and England striker Alessia Russo.

This season, Met Police have averaged a crowd of around 70 people, but more than 1,000 packed into Imber Court for that visit of Newport County in 2018, the PA system crackling out I Fought The Law by The Clash as the players came out of the tunnel in pouring rain. Semenyo was only given a seven-minute runout, during a loan at Newport from Bristol City.

And therefore Semenyo, more than anyone else on the pitch at Wembley on Saturday, knows what this competition is all about. It’s not just about Wembley, and it’s not just about what happens at cramped non-League venues in the first few months of the season. It’s about both: the concept that any club, in theory, can progress through the rounds to face Premier League opposition. In reality, clubs don’t progress all the way. But sometimes players do.

Semenyo had to do things the hard way. He was rejected by Arsenal, Tottenham Hotspur, Crystal Palace and Millwall in his teenage years.

“I went to so many clubs and it was the same result every time: ‘Yeah, not good enough. Come back in the next couple of months’,” Semenyo said in an interview with The Athletic in 2024. “It happened with Millwall four or five times and I ended up getting frustrated. They were scouting me every three months but every time I went for a trial, I was told I wasn’t good enough.” After being rejected by Palace, Semenyo spent the following year barely playing sport at all.

It was only after he moved from London to Swindon at 16 that his football career vaguely got back on track, albeit at the somewhat unpromising-sounding South Gloucestershire and Stroud College, at an age when most future top Premier League players are in academies. He owes much to the mentorship of the side’s coach, former Leeds United manager David Hockaday.

“A lot of people don’t bounce back,” Hockaday told The Athletic earlier this year. “Well, Antoine has bounced back to the nth degree… the journey that Antoine had is something of a throwback. I’m sure he’s been playing with groups of friends, experiencing rejection, and been resilient enough to overcome that.”

That Newport FA Cup run was the making of Semenyo. He started in the 4-0 win against fellow Welsh outfit Wrexham before their Hollywood takeover, and was then excellent in a classic giant-killing, when they a defeated a Leicester City side with a defence of four Premier League title winners: Danny Simpson, Wes Morgan, Jonny Evans and Christian Fuchs.

He returned to Bristol City before Newport’s cup run was over. It was actually the second of three key loan spells: one in the sixth tier with Bath City, one in the fourth tier with Newport, and one in the third tier with Sunderland.

From there, Semenyo has conquered first the Championship with Bristol City, then the Premier League with Bournemouth. Having regularly impressed in matches against Manchester City, his move to Pep Guardiola’s side in January was a reflection that he was now among the most fearsome attackers in the Premier League. Comfortable on either flank, and equally happy shooting with his left or right foot, Guardiola initially deployed Semenyo in a No 10 role, but now uses him mostly from the right flank.

Semenyo’s FA Cup winner was a moment of magic in an otherwise drab match. Meeting Erling Haaland’s driven cut-back with an instinctive touch with the inside of his right foot, behind his left foot and into the ground, he generated extra momentum by pirouetting upon impact. Had he tried something similar on that miserable trip to Met Police, the ball would probably have got stuck in the mud.

After the game, Chelsea’s interim manager Callum McFarlane analysed the goal well.

“We held the line really well,” he said. “Semenyo goes into an offside position, Bernardo (Silva) is trying to slide Semenyo in, Haaland reads it, and gets onto the ball. We make him play an awkward, right-footed cross under pressure, and he finishes from outside the line of the front post, under pressure. So, for me, it’s a one-in-a-hundred goal, a really low-xG goal, so there’s nothing more we could do in that moment.”

“Usually he crosses to Erling,” said Guardiola. “Today, Erling crossed to him.”

An FA Cup final between City and Chelsea may not have captured the imagination of the neutrals — this was the 10th season in a row the final has featured one of these clubs. But Semenyo was a great match-winner.

Up and down the country, and up and down the football pyramid, footballers will be telling their mates that, once upon a time, they played against the man who scored the winner in the FA Cup final.

Click here to read article