EFL CUP FINAL MAN UNITED Mata: This is United’s new game of thrones
JUAN MATA is convinced victory in today’s EFL Cup Final at Wembley will be the springboard for a new era of success at Manchester United.
The fleet-footed Spanish midfielder reckons Jose Mourinho’s men can be catapulted into a golden period of silverware with great days back on the horizon for United.
Just like in 2006 when young stars like Cristiano Ronaldo and Wayne Rooney won their first trophy in the League Cup Final against Wigan at Cardiff’s Millennium Stadium, Mata is confident a repeat performance against Southampton will give Paul Pogba, Marcus Rashford and Anthony Martial the taste for sustained glory.
He said: “Well, that’s what we want, if we are here in three years we can say it all started here this Sunday but obviously we have to play well, respect Southampton.
“It’s always good for a young player with a big team to play in finals with real importance in front of big crowds. It could be very good.
“Every time you win a final, it is a happy day. You mark it in your career as a special day. When you touch silverware, it is a very nice feeling.
“We cannot speak about winning without playing first, but hopefully in a few years we can speak about how we brought silverware to the club again and it can be the start of a good era once more.
“Hopefully victory will make that happen. We started with the Community Shield and now we can have the second one to win.
“We are still alive in the FA Cup and the Europa League. Every player has the right mentality to think we can do something important this season and in the future for this club.”
Mata might be small in a United team full of giants but he’s big on mentality, having survived under Mourinho when no one gave him a chance.
He was on holiday when Mourinho was appointed as Louis van Gaal’s successor last summer.
And having been previously sold to United for £38million by his former Chelsea boss, the obituaries on his Old Trafford career began. However, Mata showed his fighting instinct – and now he’s playing an integral role in a reinvigorated United side.
“I was asked many times about my future but I kept quiet because I knew that many of the things being said were not right and a situation was being created that didn’t happen,” he said.
“So I kept believing in myself like I always have done. I knew I could be important for this football club and I feel I am, so I tried to speak on the pitch because that is what you have to do.
“It doesn’t really matter speaking on social media or with the press guys, you have to perform on the pitch and that is what really matters.
“So many things were said in the summer but I like to speak through my football, that’s what I like to do and that’s why I am proud of it.
“Let’s speak more about this at the end of the season. Now, in February, we are in a good moment – good for me as well.” JUAN MATA will make a plane dash from Spain to Wembley today after attending his grandfather’s funeral. He was given special dispensation by boss Jose Mourinho to travel home on Thursday for personal reasons. EVER since Manchester United returned from St Etienne they have been in super-strict Final mode to ensure the first trophy of the season doesn’t go to the dogs.
But for Lou Macari and some of Tommy Docherty’s 1976 FA Cup Final stars, a trip to the greyhound track was the order of the day in the build-up the last time they met Southampton in a major Wembley final.
For when Docherty’s men hit London in the lead up to the showpiece game almost 41 years ago, Macari has revealed United’s stars were handed a pass-out rather than orders to lay low.
Jose Mourinho’s stars have been in lockdown since their Europa League tie in France with a big-game focus, tactical planning – and rest the only fun on the agenda.
A far cry then from the laidback preparations Macari and his team-mates ran through before their big day.
The Scotland World Cup star recalls: “In those days when we went to London we often stayed at the Selsdon Park Hotel which was some way out of town.
“For those FA Cup Finals against Southampton in ’76 and Liverpool the year after we’d go down south three or four days before the game.
Scrutiny
“And after we’d done our training we were free to head out wherever we wanted to go.
“I remember a couple of days before t he game with Southampton we went to the dogs at White City one night.
“There were no security men with us either because in those days that kind of thing was unheard of.
“Nowadays United players don’t go anywhere in a group without a minder and you couldn’t imagine Paul Pogba and Zlatan Ibrahimovic taking off to the dogs in London a couple of days before the final, could you?
“Even though United were big news back then there wasn’t the intense 24-hour scrutiny on players that exists now.