MADRID, Nov 10 - If the Spanish Federation had deliberately wanted to kill off the King's Cup they could hardly have designed a more effective manner of dealing the mortal blow than the way they have treated the competition in the last few seasons.

Across Europe, despite other demands for the top clubs, domestic cup competitions still often retain some measure of excitement, drama and romance as shown by Manchester United's shock exit from the League Cup at the hands of second division strugglers Southend United this week.

In Spain, however, the Federation appears to be sucking the lifeblood out of the 105-year-old competition by their incessant meddling with the rules of the draw, their unwillingness to stand up to demands of the big clubs and a refusal to allow the latter stages of the Cup to be played on a one-off knock-out basis.

The result is a sterile competition, beset by a surfeit of almost meaningless matches many of which are bereft of emotion and barely manage to spark interest even amongst the devoted fans.

With no place in European competition likely through their league place, and the league title an impossible dream, Atletico Madrid have made the Cup one of their priorities this season.

However less than 4,000 fans rattled around in their 54,000-capacity stadium for their first leg match against fellow Primera Liga side Levante two weeks ago.

Tickets for Real Madrid's home matches are usually like gold dust, but for the nine-times European champions have had to drop the prices to just three euros in order to entice fans along for their second leg match against third division Ecija on Thursday.

For the supporters at least, the King's Cup is dying a slow and painful death.

WORST EXAMPLE

The rot set in several years back as some of the bigger clubs began to treat the competition with distain. The worst example being when Barcelona refused to play the second leg of their semi-final in 2000, claiming they had too few players available as a result of injuries and international call-ups.

Barca were thrown out of the competition, but then inexplicably reinstated following a pardon by Federation president Angel Maria Villar.

The following season Deportivo Coruna made use of a Federation ruling that allowed them to refuse to play a tie against third division Hospitalet on an artificial pitch because it might prejudice their chances of winning the match.

Hospitalet refused to turn up and Depor progressed into the next round.

Almost every season, the format and draw regulations are changed, providing new, more bizarre, ways of exempting the big clubs from the initial rounds which are sometimes played as one-off ties and thus avoiding the danger of a potential early exit from the competition.

Last year the Federation made an 11th hour decision to bow to pressure from the top ranking clubs and exempted first and second division teams from the initial draw and then allowed sides playing in European competition like Barca and Real Madrid to be given an automatic place in the last 16.

The decision deprived modest third and fourth division outifts the chance of lucrative ties against one of the Primera Liga giants and condemned them to playing an extra round of encounters amongst themselves.

Not only do Primera Liga sides have the benefit of playing the ties over two legs and thus reducing the chances of any shock results, but they are also granted the added advantage of playing the second leg at their home stadium.

CONGESTED FIXTURES

The big guns moan about the problems created by a congested fixture list and the fatigue of players involved in three major competitions, while a succession of national team coaches have comlained that they have little time to prepare for major tournaments because of the length of the Spanish season.

Whenever a tie happens to be postponed because of bad weather as was this week's return leg between Levante and Atletico or for other reasons such as when a linesman was hit by a coin in last season's clash between Valencia and Deportivo it becomes almost impossible to find an alternative slot in the calendar.

The final itself often takes place as late as mid June.

An obvious way to overcome these problems would be to turn the Cup into a straight one-off knockout competition.

At the same time it would create a more attractive and exciting format along the lines of the FA Cup, a competition that is widely admired by fans in Spain.

Big clubs complain it is unfair for them to play at smaller grounds with less than perfect pitches, but they seem to forget that the Cup remains one of the rare occasions in football where teams can compete in conditions of relative equality.

The King's Cup is in desperate need of a shot in the arm and classic FA Cup-style format would be the perfect way to coax the competition back to life.