Oxford City host Leicester in FA Cup as Forestieri chases an upset
Non-league Oxford City host Leicester City in the FA Cup first round on Friday evening, and Fernando Forestieri wants his side to pull off a famous win.
The two clubs are a long way apart. Oxford City play in the National League North, the sixth tier of English football, and are nicknamed the Hoops. Leicester are a League One club, the third tier, three levels above them. Non-league clubs are the ones outside the professional Football League, and the FA Cup is the knockout competition where they sometimes get their biggest days.
The match kicks off at 7.45pm GMT. Television coverage starts at 7pm GMT on TNT Sports 1 and HBO Max, according to The FA. The first round of the competition gets underway on Friday 6 November.
Forestieri is a 36-year-old Argentine forward, which means his job is to get into scoring positions and finish chances. He has played for Watford and Sheffield Wednesday in the Football League. He spoke to BBC Sport about the tie and the chance to inspire Oxford City to an upset over a side from a much higher division.
He made his Oxford debut recently. He came on as an 81st-minute substitute when his side were already 3-0 up away at Hebburn Town, in front of 873 supporters. Coming off the bench late is a common way for a senior striker to join a squad, and it gave him a few minutes to settle before this bigger night.
His career also reaches back to a famous season for English football. In 2015-16, when Leicester won the Premier League title, Forestieri helped Sheffield Wednesday reach the Championship play-off final. A play-off is a knockout game at the end of the season that decides one of the final promotion places. Wednesday lost that final to Hull City at Wembley.
So Leicester's season that year was one of the great stories in the English game, a club from the middle of the pack winning the top flight at odds of 5000-1. Ten years on, the same club comes to Oxford as a team that has to earn its results in League One. For Oxford, the Cup is the chance to share a night with a famous name, and to give their own supporters something to remember.
Cup nights like this one work because they are simple. One team needs to win, the other needs to avoid the slip. Friday's game will decide which side goes through to the second round.
