LOL - my son has a 'semi-formal' next week for the end of year 10.
A really stylish mid grey suit, pale blue shirt, ten shoes and ...
... he is INSISTENT that he have a self tie bow tie. I only learnt to do them when I went to a black tie function this side of 40 and decided I was too old for clip ons. It seems that lots of teh guys are going with bow ties, he thinks he will be the only one with a self tie. Of course at some stage during the evening the tie will HAVE to be undone ...
Quite a stylish little number he has chosen
Smart boy. Clip ons are for men who have no man card. It's not hard to tie a bow tie and self-tie one comes in many cool styles - they actually stand out and look good, and they're not meant to be 100% perfect. The point is, at some stage of the evening it gets untied, and you get to be the cool bloke in the room who's shown he can tie his own tie, incite tie envy in men and garner the admiration of the ladies. A plain black one is just meh, everyone has one. Garishly coloured ones are for Bogan weddings.
The only reason men think it is hard, is because most maybe try once a year, or less. How long did it take most of us to learn a regular tie? (assuming you leant a Windsor or half Windsor and don't just throw a tie around once and thread through.)
Now all you have to do is just on YT and there a thousand vids on how. No excuses.
As for the Cup, most of us don't give a fat rats clack over in the west. The only ones who care have taken the day off work to get munted.