Dad’s got dementia and he doesn’t know I’m Villa boss. He’s the reason I love this club... I owe him so much
DEAN SMITH OPENS UP ON HIS FAMILY HEARTBREAK
‘What about all those fans who left early?’ I replied, ‘Yeah, and you’d have been one of them too, wouldn’t you, if I wasn’t the manager’ – I just hope he wasn’t booing when we were three-down.”
Try telling Smith or the tens of thousands who will head down the M6 and M40 today that the League Cup isn’t worth winning.
“It is,” he said. “Without a shadow of a doubt. Ask Pep Guardiola, who has won three Champions League finals. He’ll want it as much as we do. Ask my assistant John Terry, who has lifted it three times.
“It’s a domestic final. Apart from the Premier League, there are only two competitions we can win each year.
“I keep drumming it into the players – and I think this has been forgotten because of the success and the finances in the Premier League – in a 15-year career you’ve got 45 opportunities to win something, excluding European competitions. The League Cup, FA Cup, promotion or a title.
“It’s not that many chances to win something and, for me growing up, it was just about winning. Getting those titles, trophies, medals – and it was the same for JT as well. There’s a lot about now just surviving in the Premier League rather than winning trophies. But I’ve never lost that desire to win things.”
And so to today’s opponents. A team that has defeated them by an aggregate of 9-1 in the Premier League this season – including a morale-sapping six-goal thumping at Villa Park just seven weeks ago.
He said: “Jack Grealish talks even now about that first game at the Etihad. He said our players sat in the dressing room convinced they were going to win. That’s a big statement.
“They’d had some changes, so had we. We made a mistake and they went one-up. Then VAR gave them a second. David Silva touched it in, but they gave the goal to Kevin De Bruyne.
“But David Silva was saying to the referee, ‘It’s my goal, I’ve touched it’. He was offside. Why the referee didn’t consult VAR, I don’t know.
“And we gave them a very big helping hand in that last game against them when we lost 6-1.
“But you just sense sometimes there’s a desire to prove people wrong in any dressing room. The majority of them are like me. My drive has always been to prove people wrong.
“We live in a culture where there’s not a lot of praise going around, usually people trying to knock you. The drive for me, and us, is to prove them wrong.
“And there aren’t many better places to do it than a domestic cup final at Wembley.”
Now a pundit with ITV and and BT Sport as well as undertaking radio work.
A sports agent before returning to Villa as a club ambassador and owns globalfootballpro.com
Went into property development, but coached at his first club Notts County until recently.
Amassed over 100 caps for Serbia and is manager of Partizan Belgrade.