Ah, the Capital One Cup. Or Carling Cup, or Worthington Cup, or Coca Cola Cup, or whatever you want to call it. The League Cup, the FA Cup's often derided little brother. Seemingly always dismissed by the game’s elite as an unwelcome distraction. Small fry, in comparison to the League and European exploits of our biggest clubs.
Is the Capital One Cup something we are all happy to dismiss? Or, at the end of the day, is a trophy a trophy?
You can picture the scene, as a football fan I imagine it is one you have pictured many times with great relish. The captain of your club, trophy aloft, stands in front of a packed house at Wembley Stadium. You and the rest of your clubs fans cheer uncontrollably, fireworks and ticker tape fill the sky.
Not a bad image is it? Who wouldn’t want that? This was the scene painted when last season’s winners Liverpool lifted what was then the Carling Cup for a record 8th time, having just beaten Cardiff City in a thrilling final. But this scene appears to be one that is not of any real importance to a modern day football manager.
Liverpool and Cardiff were certainly not the two best teams on paper in that competition. The same could be said of Birmingham City who had won it the year before or Aston Villa who finished runners up the season before that.
With the greatest respect to the teams mentioned above, a strong argument could be made that the success of many of these teams has come as the Arsenal’s, Manchester City’s and Manchester United’s of this world see this competition as nothing more than a congested fixture list. A chance to give young players an opportunity and give senior players a rest with more important games on the horizon.
On Tuesday night Arsenal travelled to Reading with a place in the Capital One Cup quarter final at stake. But with a huge fixture at Manchester United on the weekend there was never any chance of Arsenal risking a full team here. The kids were used and it came as little surprise to anyone that they were.
Arsenal fielded an almost unrecognisable team. Marouane Chamakh and Andrei Arshavin brought in from the wilderness. Starts also for Ignasi Miquel (???), Serge Gnabry (???), Damián Martinez (???) and others. Players such as Thomas Vermaelen, Lukas Podolski and Mikel Arteta absent. Not exactly a one off occurrence either, Manchester United did the same during Wednesday night’s game with Chelsea.
Starts for Scott Wootton and Michael Keane. No sign of Rooney, Van Persie or Ferdinand. Don’t blame United and Arsenal, plenty of others did the same.
It’s this perception that the competition is a long way down the pecking order that cheapens it, that makes managers, players and even fans think it’s not worth bothering with. It’s a view that the FA definitely shares, £100,000 of prize money for winning the Capital One Cup compared to the £2million on offer for winning the FA Cup and the multi millions available in the Premier League.
So all the evidence is there, the Capital Cup doesn’t carry the financial clout or the prestige of any of the other major prizes on offer in England or the rest of Europe for that matter. But does that mean it’s not worth winning at all?
I’ll draw your mind back to the scene I laid out at the top of this page, your captain lifting a trophy aloft at Wembley. Whether your captain is John Terry, Steven Gerrard, Thomas Vermaelen, Vincent Kompany or whomever. You want to see your team win things.
And I believe the players are the same. You don’t get to the height of your profession by chance. Top flight players want to win every game they play and hurt afterwards when they don’t. Whether it be 5-a-side in training or the Champions League final.
Ask Brian McDermott and his Reading players if they feel like they’ve just lost a ‘nothing’ game of football after their defeat to Arsenal on Tuesday? Because from their post-match comments they appear to be devastated. Just the like the Arsenal players and fans were elated. And I can see why.
As football fans we’re a lot like magpies (especially if you support Newcastle, obviously), finishing in 4th or 6th or wherever is great, but really we want something shiny. We want to win trophies. The Capital One Cup isn’t the most important one, but it still is one.
But there’s maybe an even more important reason why the Capital One Cup matters. Because we love football. And anyone who loves football would have been enthralled by the spectacle that was Reading vs Arsenal in the Capital One Cup. Arsenal came out 7-5 winners after extra time when in the 37th minute their fans were heading home with their side already 4-0 down.
The game had everything. Goals (in abundance), attacking football, an amazing atmosphere. On 90 minutes two Arsenal players threw their shirts into the crowd, believing they had dramatically secured a replay. They then had to ask for them back to play extra time. Great entertainment.
It was a game that created no headlines regarding abuse or unsporting behaviour, a credit to the players, clubs and fans involved. I, as a neutral, was truly gripped every step of the way. A truly phenomenal game of football.
And if that wasn’t enough, then on Wednesday we were also treated to Chelsea beating Manchester United 5-4. 21 goals in two unbelievable games of Capital One Cup football.
Wouldn’t it be a travesty if after these epic games we simply didn’t care?