In more than twenty years at the helm of Arsenal, Arsène Wenger has never won the League Cup. He saw this competition as a playground for the club’s young talents and as a way to test new formulas. It was not until 2007 that “The Professor” reached his first final in this competition, and to compete in it, he chose to field the players who had allowed the team to achieve this. With an average age of 21, this team was the youngest in the history of an English professional final. They were facing a Chelsea team coached by José Mourinho, who had just won back-to-back Premier League titles and were in some ways England’s answer to the ‘Galacticos’.
The imbalance between the two teams was such that they must be listed to understand the difference in level. Mourinho had lined up his typical team: Petr Cech; Lassana Diarra, John Terry, Ricardo Carvalho, Wayne Bridge; Claude Makelele, Michael Essien, Michael Ballack, Frank Lampard; Didier Drogba, Andriy Shevchenko.
In the red corner, Wenger had lined up: Manuel Almunia; Justin Hoyte, Kolo Touré, Philippe Senderos, Armand Traoré ; Theo Walcott, Cesc Fàbregas, Denilson, Abou Diaby; Jérémie Aliadière, Julio Baptista.
Remarkably, Arsenal took the lead through Walcott, then 17, but Drogba equalized soon after. A lively match descended into chaos late in added time after Drogba had given Chelsea the lead, with John Obi Mikel, Emmanuel Adebayor and Touré all sent off.
The consensus after the last League Cup final at the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff was that Arsenal had been the better team that day and had given themselves the means to secure their future, but the club ultimately failed in both the short and long term. Wenger’s side won just three of their final twelve Premier League games that season and were knocked out of the Champions League at the round of 16 by PSV Eindhoven, while they did not win a title again until 2014.
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