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New Women’s Football editor, Sophie Lawson, makes her Prost International debut and asks if the 2020 Conti Cup final has breathed new life into the competition.
Prost International welcomes new columnist Sophie Lawson
The 2019 Continental Cup final was dreadful. It was the type of match you sit at and feel your hair growing, the seconds dragging by.
Ennui had taken a hold of the stadium and the realisation that we’d all have to sit through a further 30 minutes of extra time was draining, dragging those in attendance deeper into a stupor.
It wasn’t the first Conti Cup final that had lasted entirely too long, and it was only the second that had gone to extra time but it felt indicative of the women’s league cup; pointless, endless, punishing.
From Burton to Rotherham
The cup had undergone a few format changes in its time, whilst keeping the same title sponsor throughout. The first edition, in the first year of the Women’s Super League was, thankfully, a straight knock-out.
With just one tier consisting of eight teams, the league cup was played over three weekends in September, after the season had finished, and culminated with an afternoon final in Burton as league winners, Arsenal, bested league runners up Birmingham City.
The second season brought about a format change to include a group stage before the knockouts but still only featured the same eight WSL teams. Again, the finalists were first and second in the league and again, Arsenal defeated Birmingham City, the difference that the earlier rounds were played earlier in the season and that the final had moved to Barnet and was contested on a Wednesday night.
The format stuck and the following season followed the same pattern of group stage, semi-final and final (still in Barnet) with Arsenal victorious at the end of it.
As the WSL expanded to what was WSL 1 and WSL 2, so did the league cup, opening up larger groups and more games and for the first time, in 2014, the cup finally had a new and different winner in Manchester City.
It wasn’t quite a changing of the guard, as Arsenal had still reached the final, but it was a glimpse of things to come from Manchester City in their first WSL season. Although some things remained the same, the match had kicked-off at 7.45pm on a Thursday night in High Wycombe in front of a crowd of 3,697.
Arsenal regained the title the following season, in a match better remembered for the erroneous red card shown to Laura Bassett in the 34 minute that rather took any interest out of the clash.
There was a final insult for the losers, Notts County. Those in charge forgot to bring out the runners-up medals and the team had to have their own medal ceremony on the coach back from Rotherham – although, you’d be wrong to expect much more from the league cup.
The match did however set a record attendance, a conservative assumption that fans were still riding the World Cup high, the match taking place less than four months after the tournament in Canada.
At the CF? Aye!
The 2016 edition brought about a slice of controversy as Manchester City’s home ground – the City Football Academy – was chosen and confirmed as the venue for the roaming final, “But what if City reach the final? What if City reach the final?” upset fans enquired, well first, City had to reach the final and then we could talk about injustice.
City did, of course, reach the final and won it, in extra time, just after wrapping up their first league title. The final wasn’t moved. It was never going to be moved and Birmingham City fans were rightly aggrieved and then more so when they had two reasonable penalty claims waved away during the match.
It was City’s year and despite the match being played at the home ground of one of the finalists, in a stadium across the road from the men’s ground, the attendance significantly dropped from the previous year, again the final seemed an afterthought.
As WSL moved from a summer to a winter calendar after the 2017 Euros, the league cup was given time off for good behaviour in 2017 to return the following year, the final having been moved from October and November to February and March.
From a one-off straight knock-out format in 2016 that saw part-time London Bees reach the semi-finals, the Conti Cup reverted to a group stage tournament and back to its predictable self. The final was played at Adams Park for the second time, again on a midweek evening, again Arsenal and Manchester City featured, again Arsenal won.
You could count the number of press covering the match on your hands, and almost how many fans there were in the stands too as the final set a new lowest attendance (2,136).
By 2019 the final had moved to a weekend and had been allotted a 12.15pm kick-off time in Sheffield, a fortuitous move with the match decided on penalties. When the time and venue for the 2020 final was announced – 5.30pm at the City Ground – everyone raced to check train times: if the match were to go the distance again, there was a good chance of being stranded in Nottingham after the last train. We prayed for no more than 90 minutes.
A 2020 reprieve and a good final
Arsenal were depleted, Chelsea – making their debut in the final – had run rampant in their previous meeting, even when the team sheets came out, one side was markedly stronger. Arsenal’s bench consisted of three teenagers starved for minutes, one senior goalkeeper and a senior fullback, predictably the Gunners made no substitutions.
Chelsea once again had the measure of Arsenal over the opening exchanges and Beth England’s eighth minute goal seemed like it would be the one to open the floodgates yet, surprisingly to everyone, it had the opposite effect.
Arsenal roared into life and for the first time in a long time in Conti Cup final history, the fans were treated instead of being forced to suffer through dour football in parky conditions. The majority of the first half was a fair competition with end-to-end spells, by the second half, the match was all Arsenal but with Chelsea still a goal to the good, the tie became a spectacle that was hard to look away from.
Having dictated and dominated for the majority of the final, whilst staunchly refusing to have a punt or try something a little different, steadfast in their passing style, Arsenal grabbed a late equaliser. The wind continued to drag itself off of the Trent and whip through Nottingham, fingers numb as fans began to mentally prepare themselves for extra time.
Arsenal threw caution to the wind, instead of trying to string 50 passes together, sent the ball over the top and tried to catch Chelsea napping and with the game stretched, the Blues broke, overloading the Arsenal box and found a stoppage time winner courtesy of England.
As Chelsea manager Emma Hayes admitted after the match:
“The better team didn’t win the game, the most resilient team won the game.”
Chelsea had been the favourites coming into the match, but they had been on the back foot for the bulk of the game yet through self-belief and the unwavering desire to win, had weathered the storm and come out the other end victorious.
And for the first time, in a long long time, the Conti Cup had a good final.
Hope ahead
Over its nine-year life the league cup final has been relegated to afterthought, from Burton to Adams Park, played after the season has finished, and shoehorned into midweek matches.
The main bulk of the competition, which due to its group stage (currently consisting of four “regional” groups: two north, two south) seems to drag and drag. Part-time teams are routinely pitted against full-time pros lending to polarised scorelines, made worse by midweek time slots that ask part-timers to compete a full day of work and rush off to another part of the country just to get pasted by senior internationals.
For those second-tier teams who do the unthinkable and find a win against a team of professionals, the group element will often mean it counts for very little.
As the cup becomes more and more drawn out with more teams playing in it, the media coverage remains lax throughout, the competition not one the FA pays for to be covered by Opta – even just for the final. Matches are generally not streamed and highlights from the group stage remain at the discretion of the individual clubs, and of course, Conti Cup matches are usually poorly attended.
Members of the press continue to ask, “Why?” why does the Conti Cup still exist? Why does it still have a group stage? Why do we persist? In a season when Emma Hayes called for it to be scrapped (before finally hooking her white whale), another dismal final might have been the nail in the coffin of the cup.
But as she sat before the media (who had multiplied beyond belief from the years prior) in her post-match press conference, her tune was a different one, as she said,
“I had a lot of players that hadn’t really won anything in their career…so it mattered.”
That sentiment was one that former Man City defender Abbie McManus had touched on earlier in the season, “
I remember the first Conti Cup more than anything else, more than going to the World Cup…” she said.
Emma Hayes and the Conti Cup
In eight finals, only two teams had won the cup, only four teams had actually made the final so for Chelsea (and their growing collection of trophies) who were always favourites, to finally upset the status quo, it offers hope.
Maybe a wider hope that there is another piece of silverware out there that teams can win, that won’t automatically go to Arsenal or Man City, that you can be the “weaker” team in a final, against a rampant side who’ve got more silverware than the royal family, and still come out triumphant.
Yes, Arsenal lacked a final ball and focused too much on possession over proficiency in front of goal but for 90 minutes, fans were treated to an engrossing match that kept an air of anticipation and capriciousness.
Sometimes all you really want is 90 minutes of good football and that’s something that past Conti Cup finals have lacked.
Maybe the cup will always draw lower numbers and poorer coverage but what happened on Saturday will inject some magic back into what’s become a predictable and dour competition.
