Fizz, froth, colour, and a hint of pulse-pumping vim. Welcome to Wembley Stadium, February 2023, a place where Thailand’s second-most popular energy drink is finally having its own on-brand midwinter moment.
There have been times during Carabao’s five-year title partnership when the final of English football’s second-tier domestic cup has felt a little flavourless, flat and lacking in gas. Manchester City won the first four titles of the Carabao era. Quadruple-chasing Liverpool pipped a mid-meltdown Chelsea on penalties to claim the last one. And for all the fun of the day itself this has felt like an incidental kind of glory: keenly fought on the day, but essentially a piece of housekeeping en route to some other more vital appointment.
Until now, that is. Sunday afternoon offers something else: an epic-feeling Carabao Cup final, a match with genuine significance for both teams, and around the edges a swirl of subplots and macro forces. Five years in, this thing has finally begun to fizz and spurt and pump the metabolism, to glow with its own migraine-inducingly vibrant colours.
Newcastle’s wait for a trophy is well documented: a long-suffering, reliably overplayed (oh stop it, the media) narrative of tender hopes and cruel denial, the Geordie Nation out there wandering the darkness like Arthurian knights in search of domestic knockout trophy Albion. But it has been almost six years for Manchester United too, the club’s longest trophy drought since the early 80s.
It matters for the players, too. As of Sunday’s 4.30pm kick-off only three likely starters from both teams – Marcus Rashford, David de Gea and Joe Willock – have actually won a major English domestic cup. Nobody here is travelling to Wembley to fill out the bingo card, to keep the throttle ticking over for some more significant event.
Plus, of course, like every other issue in football this is a final bound up in an almost laughably profound sense of politics and outside forces. Newcastle’s Saudi owners have kept their distance so far, earning praise for their “classiness” from those who wish to see fine human qualities rather than a hardline theocracy making political capital. But a trophy, or even just a presence on the Wembley pitch, is a wonderful early dividend on the whole soft-power project.
Meanwhile Manchester United continue to vet potential new owners, the Glazers taking tea with their rota of suitors like ghastly maiden aunts in an abandoned Jane Austen romance – a handsome farmer here, a fussicky curate there, an aggressively expansionist hardline regime in the front parlour.
And beyond these wider forces there are, of course, more human-scale reasons why this feels like an unusually fascinating final. At both clubs there is something reassuring in the fact the most interesting part of their recent progress is still the internal architecture, the fine-point coaching and management that has brought the best out of some parts that were already in place.
Given the sheer sheer scale of the pre-existing problems, this applies most spectacularly to Erik ten Hag. Win or lose on Sunday, the Dutchman has already achieved something significant, and indeed instructive. Lest we forget, this was – and may become again – an institution so grotesquely dysfunctional it seemed to radiate toxic vibes, a graveyard of hopes, dreams, plans and playing promise.
Success at the world’s third-richest club is never really going to wash as a heartwarming underdog story. But such has been the putrid state of the club’s internal cultures that even the current uptick, the basic sense of some guiding intelligence, happy players, energy, feels like a rescue job.
Ten Hag has been a transformative presence at this basic level, and not just because of United’s fine form, with one defeat since November. This is more about the feeling of Ten Hag, a one-man reminder that even inside an institution where not so long ago Cristiano Ronaldo was being wildly praised as a leader of men for making people feel bad about eating cake, it is still possible to apply a decisive edge of emotional intelligence.
Before his arrival there was talk Ten Hag wasn’t a people person, that his communication was poor and overly technical. This seemed to go against his success in helping young players to bloom and the gentle charm of his unscripted public appearances (witness, for example, Ten Hag’s amused deference when Louis van Gaal turns up during training at Ajax and starts telling everybody how the world works in the documentary film Louis).
These reservations came from the Dutch media, who perhaps wanted a little more in the way of salesmanship and highfalutin chat. The point is: Manchester United don’t need salesmen. They already have too many. This team needed an unwavering eye, and somebody with zero interest in anything outside of tactics, chemistry, human connection and the mechanics of football. This is what Ten Hag has applied, together with a remarkable capacity for patching up the faltering human parts he inherited.
It is by accident or design – I’m going accident – precisely the medicine this ailing body needed. And in this sense Ten Hag has been a gift to English football too, if only because so many previously unhappy English players seem to have benefited.
Nobody outside of Ten Hag and Rashford knows the exact content of the early conversations that have led not just to the current golden seam of form, but to a footballer who looks happy in himself, comfortable in his talent, his role, his place in this thing.
The public side was clear enough. Rashford was disciplined, without fuss or drama, for some slackness in late December. Since coming on as a sub to win the game against Wolves, a good run of form has become a defining one, with 14 goals in 16 games and the sense of a man playing with a kind of light around him. Whether United go on to win at Wembley or not (and Rashford may not start due to injury) this has already been a triumph.
Similarly Ten Hag’s handling of Jadon Sancho has shown a rare emotional acuity. Sancho was clearly struggling with some elemental aspects of his life in Manchester. Ten Hag gave him air and has since played around expertly with his role and his position. Sancho finally looks like what he is, all promise and talent, an asset not a riddle to be solved.
The same goes for two other English players who were previously semi-functioning parts. Luke Shaw has become a reliable ever-present. Rashford and Bruno Fernandes (also re-geared into the very best Bruno) have played most games under Ten Hag, with Shaw not far down the list. He looks fitter and supremely confident. Mainly, he looks happy.
Even Harry Maguire has, to some degree, been “solved”. There have been no ructions following his dropping, no sense of a player who feels disrespected. Maguire may now get to leave the club without rancour or blame, and having lifted his first career trophy, a de facto happy ending that seemed improbable at one stage.
Ten Hag’s basic seriousness has been a catalyst for these changes, his own non-negotiable sense of the right way to act, of a moral framework, the code of the angry, bald ascetic Dutchman. It is a reminder that simple human virtues can have a clarifying effect even in the chaos of modern day elite club football. For the first time in some time even losing a final would feel like just another step in the process.
