Originally published by Ace Magazine on-line on 3rd March 2014.
In 1999, just after Manchester City had gained promotion via the playoffs and Manchester United had won the Champions League, there was a suggestion cheekily suggested by some journalists the national papers that there was something in the water to have produced two thrilling moments in football history. For Manchester City it was the start, a true beginning back to the land of redemption after years of lacklustre and almost abject football. Times change, City no longer have the tag of being a big time laughing stock but they don’t half cut it close to becoming so at times.
In one of the finest League Cup finals in recent years, Sunderland, the outsiders who had real aspirations of causing the type of upset that Wigan Athletic inflicted upon the free scoring men in last year’s F.A. Cup Final, accepted the challenge set them and for the best part of an hour really looked as if they were going to taste their first Wembley Final victory since Bob Stokoe danced on the pitch and the sale of overcoats and Trilbies went through the roof.
If football matches lasted 45 minutes, then every single Sunderland player quite rightly would be heading back with renewed heart for the crunching time ahead in the relegation battle that is coming their way, they surely would also be heading towards never having to pay for a meal again in the Sunderland area. Football though is cruel, she is a mistress that never lets you take anything for granted and by the time the giant Ivorian Yaya Toure equalised with perhaps one of the finest goals you will ever see grace a League Cup Final …or any final at Wembley, Sunderland fans must have realised, even if they never betrayed it, that it was not to be their day and that their clothes were to be found on the street below and the credit cards maxed out.
It could have been all so different, the cup could have been decked out in red and white and the engraver would have inscribing the Wearside name for the first time upon a trophy that has its critics but for the last decade at least has had more thrilling finals than its sister competition. It was not to be and if the first half suggested to everybody but the very blinkered City fan that the team were not only disrespecting their opposition, the history of the trophy and the many thousands of fans who had travelled down from Manchester, as well as the many millions more watching the game expecting more of a game from the team chasing four trophies. In the space of two second half minutes the game was virtually killed off as City made so much more of the possession that Sunderland were giving them.
To beat Manchester City you have to hit them hard and quickly. Clever football is perhaps a comfort that only reams such as Barcelona, Bayern Munich and Chelsea are able to do. Aston Villa did it, Crystal Palace arguably should have done so, but for the majority of teams that have come up against this rampaging club it has been more like just how many would you like to score past us today.
Sunderland, including the man who was ridiculously let go under the previous regime at City, the graceful Adam Johnson, held an Indian sign over City and the curse was on once more as Fabio Borini made the most of mistakes by the normally reliable Vincent Kompany and Fernandinho and gave every neutral in the country visions of Sunderland emulating Wigan’s magnificent achievement in 2013. It was only what the Black Cats deserved after having one chalked off just a couple of minutes before for offside. In truth Sunderland should have gone on from there and dominated the game. Manchester City had nothing to add to the affair, it was almost as the men from Eastlands had decided that every other trophy was too important to really care.
City were run ragged, Adam Johnson was in one of those moods in which he could sense that the back pages were going to all talk of psychological revenge and nobody surely would have begrudged him having a smile the size of Francis Lee’s in 1975 when Derby beat Man City in the league.
Cometh the hour, or at least 55 minutes, cometh the man, in this case the towering tank like figure of Yaya Toure. Sunderland could not keep out the man who seems to enjoy scoring at Wembley forever. The inevitable will always go to the mountain and make a dent in it. The one question throughout the first half was the lack of leadership, of creative deficiency and perhaps of one moment of pure luck or supreme skill and vision coming from anybody in the City side. Give Toure enough room and he will destroy you and whilst the debate will go on for years to come of whether it was a cross or a shot on goal, the result was the same, a much needed equaliser in which to give the game an edge.
It is the calmness, the absolute assuredness in which Yaya Toure can turn a game which makes him one of the best players in the Premiership and one of the finest to have ever come out of Africa. Collecting the ball from Zabeleta, surely there was no reason for Sunderland fans to panic but this is the man who takes free kicks for fun and who in another age would have been lauded as a marksman of absolute precision. Looking up, the trigger was gently squeezed and somehow, unbelievably, the game was all square. Yaya Toure had done the seemingly impossible and whilst Sunderland heads didn’t drop, there may have been a faint droop under the gaze of Gus Sunderland manager Gus Poyet.
One minute and 45 seconds, nobody would have blamed a single Sunderland player for holding their hands up and asking for the game to end as Sami Nasri, a player whose career has flourished once more under Manual Pelligrini, crashed in from 20 yards a volley with such fierceness that it may have been a surprise that the net didn’t break or at least tear slightly.
The final was all but over, Sunderland to a man played hard, they took the game to City and didn’t give up as others have all season and it is perhaps that spirit, that wonderful determination that will see them survive this season, something every fan surely would pray for Gus Poyet especially. As the minutes ticked away and the big fly in the blue ointment, Demichelis, offering reason after reason to suggest he may be the worst buy by an Man City manager since poor Steve Daley got lumbered with a million pound price tag with very little return, Sunderland could dare dream of at least getting the game back to 2-2 and but for Steven Fletcher being unable to get his feet in the correct working order, the surely would have at least taken it into extra time.
With Jesus Navas adding a third on the 90 minute mark, there was no doubt that the League Cup, under whichever marketing trool you want to fondly remember it by, was going back to the blue half of Manchester for the first time since the great Dennis Tueart broke Newcastle hearts in 1976.
Winning Manchester City manager Manuel Pellegrini, gaining his first trophy in English football told B.B.C. Five Live radio: “I’m very happy. The team deserve this cup because we played well during the whole cup and scored a lot of goals. It’s important for all of us – for the players, the club, for me, for the staff – all of us. Sunderland play a good match also and we didn’t move the ball as fast as we needed in the first half] but in the second half we scored two beautiful goals and had the patience to wait for the moment.”
Sunderland defender Wes Brown told the same media outlet: “We are so disappointed. We always knew it was going to be difficult and we needed that second goal. We tried our best and were unlucky at times. We’ve done well to get here and I hope the fans enjoyed it. But we move on and we’ve got the FA Cup first and then we have to start doing well in the league.”
Despite winning The League Cup, questions remain about City’s credentials to go on and make a clean sweep of it all. Demichelis is a indulgence that the team cannot afford. What happens should the dependable Zabaleta or Vincent Kompany become injured with so many important games to come in the next few weeks, is Dzeko a luxury the club can do without and what happens if City should at least win one more trophy and complete a double for the first time since 1970, do the owners perhaps get rid of the current manager in the way they did Roberto Mancini? All supposition of course but it is something always hanging in the air of money driven 21st Century football.
This is one trophy won for Manchester City in what has been an incredible season for them so far. The Champions League is perhaps beyond them but they can take heart that at least they have moved forward in that particular cup, but the Championship, the F.A. Cup? You wouldn’t be against them. For Sunderland, the frustration may begin to show; yes they also the F.A. Cup to aim for but for a team like Sunderland the prospect of another relegation from the top flight would surely be too much to bear.
Man City: Pantilimon, Zabaleta, Kompany, Demichelis, Kolarov, Nasri, Toure, Fernandinho, Silva (Garcia), Dzeko (Negrado), Aguero (Navas).
Substitutes: Hart, Lescott, Milner, Negredo, Javi Garcia, Jesus Navas, Clichy.
Sunderland: Mannone, Bardsley, Brown, O’Shea, Alonso, Ki, Larsson (Fletcher), Cattermole (Giaccherini), Colback, Johnson (Gardner), Borini.
Substitutes: Gardner, Fletcher, Celustka, Giaccherini, Vergini, Scocco, Ustari.
Referee: Martin Atkinson
Half Time: Manchester City 0-1 Sunderland
Scorers
Manchester City: Y. Toure, Nasri, Navas.
Sunderland: Borini.
Man of the Match: Sunderland: Lee Cattermole Man City: Yaya Toure.
Attendance: 79,921
By Ian D. Hall