Jose is right to question the League Cup’s value
Jose Mourinho, forever putting the cat among the pigeons, recently declared that he thought the League Cup, which has had more names in its time than a confidence trickster, should be abolished. This though his Manchester United side won it last season.
For this he was severely taken to task by a prominent football journalist who felt the League Cup was a source of valid competition and importance.
I must say that however ambiguous Mourinho’s attitude may seem, it is a valid view, but one that has again raised the ghost of that implacable xenophobe, Alan Hardaker. For the League Cup was conceived by him as essentially a potential rival to the hallowed FA Cup.
Originally a midweek, home-and-away aggregate affair, for some years it looked as if his ambitions had scant chance of success. But Hardaker, who bullied Chelsea out of competing in the firstever European Cup, never succumbed easily. In due course he produced his masterstroke, locating the Final at Wembley. That done, he managed to contrive a deal which gave its winners an automatic place in European football – at the expense of whatever team would have finished high enough in the league to qualify.
The crowds for the first stages of the current League Cup have, with very rare exceptions, been painfully small, with only just over 20,000 bothering to turn up at Wembley for Spurs.
For all Mourinho’s inconsistency, I do feel he is right. This is a cup too many, whatever its name.