EFL CUP FINAL PREVIEW Trump that! How The Donald helped United to cup glory
FUTURE PRESIDENT PLAYED HAND IN REDS’ FIRST LEAGUE CUP WIN
NOT even Donald Trump could stop United’s march to the Rumbelows Cup final in 1992.
The future 45th president of the United States had the fate of the competition in his hands as he made the quarter-final draw at Trump Tower four months previously.
Filmed as part of ITV’s Saint and Greavsie show in December, 1991, ‘The Donald’ stole the show when he unearthed a gem of a tie in that green velvet bag of his. Leeds against United “That’s a biggy, that sounds like the type of game I want to go to,” Trump deadpans while sitting in one of his many boardrooms.
And it was a biggy with these two teams neck and neck in the title race.
United would play Leeds three times in 17 days that winter and the Reds appeared to claim a huge psychological advantage by winning two and drawing one.
Those results spurred Sir Alex Ferguson’s side on and they would suffer just two defeats before reaching the Rumbelows Cup final against Nottingham Forest. And for Paul Parker, who had joined the Reds in search of silverware the previous summer, it was an occasion to savour.
“The most obvious thing that remember about it was the fact that I was going to Wembley and it was not with the national team,” he told M.E.N. Sport. “It never crossed my mind that it would occur so quickly in my career - it definitely was something new for me.”
The occasion also marked the first club game at Wembley for winger Andrei Kanchelskis after his £650,000 move I from Shakhtar Dontesk. The Russian still looks back fondly on Brian McClair’s goal in that 1-0 victory over Forest - even if the celebrations were fairly low key. He said: “After the game it was a normal celebration in the hotel we just went for a couple of drinks. “The next day we went to do a training session at the Cliff because we had to prepare for the next game in the league which was important for us. “The players understood what happened if you won the cup and improved every season. After this trophy, we started to win a lot of trophies.” Parker turned heads when he rejected more money to join Tottenham the previous summer and stay at United. The full-back did not want to let himself down in his first domestic cup final and looking back on that win, the 52-year-old hails it as a ‘personal triumph.’ He said: “Sir Alex Ferguson took everything quite seriously - more so the League Cup because United had never won it, so for him it was a first.
“When people talk about how many medals you win, it doesn’t matter where they come from. You say the number and they go, ‘Wow.’
“No one ever said to me, ‘It’s only a League Cup, don’t worry about it.’”
With United sitting pretty at the top of the First Division, it looked set to be a glorious campaign. But the games piled up - 58 by the end of the season - and the Reds’ title assault unravelled after three consecutive league defeats over a traumatic six days in April.
But the pain of that title heartbreak would prove a source of inspiration as Kanchelskis recalls.
“After the last game of the season, Alex Ferguson said in the dressing room, ‘It’s normal - the concentration next season we will definitely win the league.’” He was right.