Despite an exciting Wembley final, is it time to scrap the League Cup?

Let Liverpool keep the cup

The penalty that Kepa Arrizabalaga ballooned over the bar to give Liverpool EFL Cup glory should be the last kick taken in a competition that has had its day.

On Sunday at Wembley, the Reds picked up the trophy for a record ninth time, moving one clear of Manchester City in the all-time stakes, following a scoreless draw with Chelsea that was decided 11-10 after a marathon shootout. 

The trophy should now remain at Anfield to be locked away in the Merseysiders’ packed cabinet for good.

Third rate competition

Increasingly, the League Cup has become a sideshow. The prestige that the competition once carried has been depleted by the riches on offer elsewhere. The Premier League’s leading sides have understandably made European football their priority, while the makeweights in England’s top division are simply too concerned about retaining their place in the world’s richest league to cast reasonable resources to what is clearly the country’s third most important competition.

That the cup has been dominated lately by Man City is as much testament to their formidable squad depth as it is to the importance they have attached to the tournament until its later stages. 

This is echoed in Liverpool’s run to the title this season. There was barely a first-team starter in sight as they dispatched Norwich and Preston in the early rounds of the competition, and it was only by the pre-Christmas quarter-final with Leicester that there was even a hint the big guns might be brought out. 

Chelsea’s path followed a similar pattern. Even by their last-eight meeting with Brentford, Thomas Tuchel was still comfortable enough about exiting the competition to field a pair of teenagers in the form of Jude Soonsup-Bell and Harvey Vale in attack.

Man City manager Pep Guardiola has called for less football to played in England in order to protect players from injuries

Not on the radar

Make no mistake, this is not a criticism of the attitude of these clubs. It would be downright poor management for any Premier League side to toy with the possibility of jeopardising their long-term ambitions for the possibility of winning the League Cup. 

And therein lies the problem. It is a competition that is simply not worth registering on the radars of the biggest teams until the final stages.

Not only is the tournament no longer a priority, it seems to be viewed as an inconvenience only useful for giving young players first-team exposure in a setting that is relatively low in pressure. 

Pep Guardiola, the competition’s most successful manager by a street in recent years, has even been openly hostile about it.

“We need less games, less competitions, less games,” he grumbled in 2020. “People can live without football for a while. It’s too much.”

Too much of a good thing? 

Weeks after he made his remark, people were forced to survive without the game as the world went into a Covid-enforced lockdown, yet his point remains valid. There can be too much of a good thing. 

Certainly, although Sunday’s final finished scoreless, it proved an entertaining affair that was not short of talking points, from disallowed goals to an excellent protracted shootout that ultimately decided the competition.

It is, however, a tournament that has past its sell by date, an anachronism from a time when only a handful of clubs played in Europe each season.

England stands alone in the Big 5 leagues in still supporting the outdated concept of a League Cup. It is now time it falls into line by abolishing it.