GOLDEN GERARD
Everton eye Wembley after Spaniard’s magic show
THE ball fell to the boy with the blond hair, the golden boots and the confident strut on the far touchline — and the Riverside Stadium held its breath.
There did not appear to be any imminent danger but then Gerard Deulofeu began to hypnotise Fernando Amorebieta; one stepover turned into six, Middlesbrough’s defence was bamboozled and, in the blink of an eye, Everton had effectively reached the Capital One Cup semi-finals.
Romelu Lukaku, with a fine header, scored his side’s second goal in a ruthless eight-minute spell but nobody on Teesside was under any illusions about who was responsible for propelling Everton into the last four of this competition for the first time since 2008.
Deulofeu, to borrow a phrase from the travelling fans, was ‘magic’, opening the scoring with a brilliant effort before creating the decisive second. If Everton are to win the League Cup for the first time, nobody will have done more than the 21-year- old they prised from Barcelona.
‘He has a big role and is finding consistency,’ purred Everton boss Roberto Martinez. ‘Gerry can be as good as he wants to be. He has to learn but as a natural talent he is as good as it gets. You dream of that talent. When you play as a kid, you take people on and shoot.’
And that is what he does. He helped avert a calamity at Barnsley in the second round, scored a screamer at Reading in the third and converted a penalty in the last16 shootout win against Norwich, so Middlesbrough had been warned. Stopping him was another matter.
The same can be said of Everton as a whole. This competition has embarrassed them down the years but the feeling is growing that this can be their year.
The last time Everton played a quarter-final at the Riverside, it was a watershed moment. A 3-0 defeat in March 2002 ended Walter Smith’s reign and saw David Moyes ushered in to oversee a period of stability and progress.
Missing, though, was something tangible for their efforts. Everton — as a club and a team — are unrecognisable from 13 years ago but, without a trophy, they will continue to feel unfulfilled. Martinez is not daunted by the challenge and neither were Everton last night. They took the sting out of the contest and the crackle out of the home atmosphere in the opening stages.
Everton moved the ball around so smoothly that Middlesbrough could not lay a glove on them. The closest Boro came to disrupting the flow was when Stewart Downing’s 25- yard free- kick was turned around a post by Joel Robles.
Middlesbrough had a goal disallowed from the resulting corner — Downing being penalised for barging Robles — and the longer the game went without them wrestling control, the more likely it seemed Everton would make them pay.
So it proved. In the 20th minute, Deulofeu gathered possession near the halfway line and began to move forward, Ross Barkley and Lukaku peeling off to make space, allowing him to charge at Daniel Ayala and Ben Gibson. He wriggled past one and then the other, before sweeping a right-foot drive beyond Tomas Mejias with minimal backlift. It was a wonderful goal.
With their nerves settled, Everton began to open up and, crucially, they extended the lead. Deulofeu was coached by Aitor Karanka when he played for Spain’s Under 17s and he took another wrecking ball to his former manager’s dreams of reaching Wembley.
A dance down the right tormented Amorebieta and Deulofeu’s cross demanded Lukaku provide the finishing touch, which he did for the fifth consecutive game. It was the culmination of a 28-pass move and Deulofeu’s seventh assist in Lukaku’s last 13 goals. ‘Playing with Rom is easy,’ he said.
Such was the comfort with which Everton saw out the game that Martinez was able to reintroduce Leighton Baines for the final 15 minutes — his first appearance since May 9. The England left back slotted in seamlessly to cap a richly satisfying night.