City will be the only club not wearing the FA Cup badge in the 3rd round

The FA Cup is back this weekend and for teams in the Premier League, it will be the first time they’ve competed in the famous cup competition this year. While teams lower down the football pyramid have already been fighting to advance through the early stages of the tournament, the third round is where the big boys enter the mix.

There’s nothing quite like FA Cup weekends. The possibility of the underdog story, under-appreciated talent getting their chance to shine and the modified kits all sporting the Emirates sleeve patches on them. Well, almost all of them anyway. One club won’t be following that tradition and that is Manchester City.

The Cityzens are no strangers to controversy and while the rest of the competitors in the FA Cup will wear the Emirates sleeve patches on their shirts, Pep Guardiola’s side will not, and it’s been that way since 2015. Why do they refuse to wear them, though? Well, that’s what we’re here to tell you.

City refuse to advertise Emirates as it’s a direct rival to their own sponsor

Their sponsorship deal with Etihad grants them exemption

While the rest of the competition will be wearing the Emirates sleeve patches, the reigning champions don’t have to and have been granted an exemption due to their long-standing partnership with the airline’s direct rivals, Etihad, according to the Daily Mail. Emirates is a Dubai-based airline and while the Premier League champions’ sponsor is based in Abu-Dhabi, they are still close rivals in the aviation industry and as a result, the club have refused to wear the sponsor.

They’ve refused to do so since Emirates became the chief sponsor of the FA Cup back in 2015. Their commitments to Etihad ensured that any inclusion of the competition’s sponsor on their shirts would have caused issues for them. For almost a decade, the Emirates branding is typically seen on one sleeve of each team’s shirt, inside a red rectangular patch with the FA Cup logo alongside it. It’s become a tradition for most teams, but not City.

This isn’t the only time City have been in the news for some of their kit recently

They’re being sued for their training kit

Pep Guardiola’s side refuses to sport the Emirates branding to avoid upsetting their current sponsor, Etihad. Ironically, it’s their loyalty to another sponsorship that has seen them make the news this week as Superdry has filed a lawsuit against the English side after they deemed that the club’s training kit, sporting the logo of one of their sponsors, was an infringement on their trademark.