MOTHER’S DAY BLUES: League Cup Final

With end-to-end action from the start, the energy of both teams suggested this was not going to be a typical cagey Cup final. It also wasn’t a typical Mother’s Day.

Clare McEwen talks us through a football double-header that took her across several counties and ended in Bristol, at the Subway League Cup final.

A double football day may not be top of the family to-do list for every mum on Mother’s Day but it suited me just fine. Just after 8am my husband, son, and I were scooting down the M40 for my first match of the day – this one as coach to my son’s under 14s team. 

I started my “special day” with a team of only 10 players against a 16-player home squad: Mother’s Day and an hour’s drive is an unhelpful combination for weary coaches up and down the land.

Ten against 11 is rarely a fair match up but the lads played their hearts out and only lost 4-2. In all honesty, we could have won. We had three or four excellent chances in front of goal that, on another day, might have gone in. Marc Skinner may well have argued the same later in the day.

With the Player of the Match award handed out, we piled back into the car to tackle the M4 across to Bristol.

A few hours later, I was watching Chelsea and Manchester United walk out at Ashton Gate in front of a record crowd of 21,619. The scale had changed completely, but the basic emotions hadn’t.

The stadium buzzed as kick-off approached, then fell quiet for a minute’s silence in memory of Amelia Aplin and Amy Carr. Amelia Aplin, the 15-year-old Oxford United academy goalkeeper who tragically died during a match last week, and former Chelsea and England youth player Amy Carr were both remembered before kick-off.

I gathered myself and settled into what would have been a comfortable seat, were it not for the tangle of media cables underfoot threatening to take me out every time I moved.

Chelsea began by dominating possession, but the game didn’t feel one-sided. Arguably, without Lauren James providing a constant threat, there was little difference between the teams.

Fittingly, it was LJ who broke the deadlock when she was gifted an opportunity 20 minutes in. Her pressure on Dominique Janssen led to a mistake on the edge of the box and James was never going to pass up a chance like that.

It could have been 2-0 before half-time when Alyssa Thompson stormed free on goal. We’d all mentally adjusted the scoreline when Maya Le Tissier put on the afterburners and poked the ball away with a perfectly-timed, last-ditch tackle.

United had multiple opportunities to get back into the game. Elisabeth Terland was lively throughout, forcing a save from Hannah Hampton and hitting the crossbar in the first half. But it was Ellen Wangerheim who had the best chance to equalise, missing a huge opportunity from Melvine Malard’s cross.

Where Chelsea were clinical, United struggled to make enough of their moments – too often snatching at chances rather than building meaningful opportunities.

But the Reds stayed with Chelsea until Aggie Beever-Jones poked home their second, later in the game – another avoidable goal, although Beever-Jones did well to muscle her way ahead of Hanna Lundkvist for the chance.

For Chelsea, it was business as usual. For United it was frustrating and all too familiar. The Blues looked like they had another gear; the Reds looked like they were revving at max from the off – perhaps holding on a bit too tightly, a little too desperate to win this one.

Skinner was understandably frustrated afterwards, rueing the mistakes in United’s box and the lack of “clarity” in Chelsea’s. He said after:

“My players rush more than they need to. That’s the difference in these games. It’s those moments in the two boxes.”

On the other side of the coin, Sonia Bompastor was clearly delighted with another trophy. Fittingly, she celebrated on the pitch with her young family.

For Skinner, it’s back to the drawing board. For Bompastor, it’s back to the trophy cabinet.

With match two of my Mother’s Day double-header complete, I headed out of the stadium to track down my own family.

It may not have been a typical Mother’s Day scene but they’d shown their appreciation of my motherly work by getting me to and from Ashton Gate without complaint.

Photos: Clare McEwen