Manchester United are going to Wembley — this is what football’s about

There’s a Wembley buzz within Manchester United’s support, especially the match-goers. Fans talking about what they’re planning for February 26th’s League Cup final since the 3-0 semi-final first-leg triumph at Nottingham Forest. At the City Ground, 3,000 travelling United fans sang two of their most-loved terrace songs: “Wem-ber-lee, Wem-ber-lee, we’re the famous Man United and we’re going to Wem-ber-lee.” And “Que sera, sera, whatever will be, will be, we’re going to Wem-ber-lee.”

And so the excitement builds. Detractors might say it’s ‘only’ whatever the League Cup is called these days and mention how the mighty have fallen… but the mighty have fallen and the second most important domestic cup is a big deal right now, just as it was when United won the final in 1992. Or lost it against Liverpool in 1983 and Sheffield Wednesday in 1991.

True, the League Cup wins in 2006, 2009 and 2010 merged into the other trophies won by Sir Alex Ferguson. His United were so strong that it won the 2009 final with Edwin van de Sar, Ryan Giggs and Nemanja Vidic left out of the starting XI and Darron Gibson chosen ahead of Anderson and Ji-sung Park.

The 2017 League Cup, United’s fifth, followed a superb match against Southampton and fans were singing ‘Woke up this morning feeling fine…’ so long into the night that Euston station reverberated to the song adapted from the 1964 hit I’m Into Something Good by the Mancunian and United-supporting band Herman’s Hermits.

New United boss Jose Mourinho set out to win trophies from the start and won three in his first season. He was angered when, after the first, one United staff member said it was ‘only’ the Community Shield in a muted celebration on the Wembley pitch.

Some at the club held those attitudes because they’d seen it all and won the lot, but it’s 2023 and United haven’t won a trophy in almost six years. Now there’s every chance.

Manchester City, winners of six of the last eight league cups, went out in the quarter-finals. Fellow finalists Newcastle United, the last team to take a point at Old Trafford back in October and a team who’ve not won a major honour since 1969, will also fancy their chances.

There’s the small matter of two games each against Leeds United and Barcelona in February, but Wembley will be the biggest movement of travelling fans since 2018. Both of last year’s finalists (Chelsea and Liverpool) received 32,999 tickets priced between £40 to £100 for non-premium seats — and a similar number for a similar price should be expected this time.

Even with that huge allocation, there won’t be enough tickets to sate demand. But tickets aren’t the only issue. Can the trains from Manchester to London be trusted — for both price and reliability? Is it better to go by coach, if so which one? Or will someone drive? And to where? Should you leave your car by an Underground station and tube it in? Enjoy the pubs of Kilburn, Swiss Cottage, Euston or those closer to Wembley like The Green Man and The Torch.

It will be the first chance for United fans to see their team at Wembley since that 2018 FA Cup final defeat against Chelsea. How those trips have been missed.

Long gone are the days when United fanzines called Wembley ‘Old Trafford South’ due to the frequency of trips to the capital. Some of the greatest moments in United’s history have been at Wembley, no more so when Sir Matt Busby’s side became the first English team to win the European Cup in 1968, 10 years after the Munich air disaster.

Most of the Wembley highlights were in United’s FA Cup wins, the only trophies collected by the team in the 1970s and 80s. There are United fans of a certain age who consider winning the 1977 FA Cup (which also stopped rivals Liverpool winning the treble) as the greatest day of their lives — and losing to Southampton in the 1976 final and Arsenal three years later as the worst. Slightly younger Reds will remember Norman Whiteside’s winner in the 1985 final (which also stopped Everton winning a treble) as their greatest. That goal was the only time I’ve been reduced to tears of joy as a football fan.

The win in 1963 was the first trophy after Munich. The FA cup in 1990 Ferguson’s first — after a replay against Crystal Palace. Both were turning points in United’s history.

But if we think that five years is a while, then consider this: the old Wembley stadium opened in 1923, yet United didn’t play there until the 1948 FA Cup final. That game, a 4-2 win against Blackpool, is also one of the great games in the club’s history — the first trophy for Sir Matt Busby. My Uncle Charlie played in that side and he invited his brother (my grandad, also a professional footballer) and his brother’s fiancee (later my grandma) to the final. A trip to London from Manchester was a huge deal. After 1948, neither went to the capital again for the rest of their lives.

“Charlie gave me two stand tickets, but because our father was terminally ill, I told him that my fiancee and I couldn’t go,” my granddad explained before he passed away in 2014. “Then we changed our minds and Charlie gave us two terrace tickets instead. Everyone wanted a ticket in Manchester. Some businessmen in (Manchester’s) Cheetham Hill were big United fans. Because the players didn’t earn much, they invited the players to their textile factories and let a player choose some cloth to be made into a dress for their wife. The players tended to sort them out with tickets in return.

“Our bus left from the Gorse Hill pub in Stretford,” he said. “There were hundreds of United buses, but most of us had never seen United play outside Manchester before. It was such an achievement to reach the cup final then and my fiancee had a red rosette, a scarf and a lucky charm. We had a singsong on the coach which rattled to Wembley in about eight hours.”

“The teams were well matched, with good players on both sides,” my grandad told me. “Blackpool’s Stanley Matthews was one of my favourites, the best right-winger in the game. Charlie was marking him and he made a difference because he didn’t give Matthews a yard. I was very proud of my brother and of United for beating a very good Blackpool side 4-2. It was one of the best FA Cup finals.”

Charlie, who later managed Newcastle United for three years, always maintained that the FA Cup was a bigger deal to win than the league. It was a commonly-held view, but the status of the FA Cup has suffered this century, just as Wembley suffered in the last years of the last century.

The romance of the old Wembley’s Twin Towers became overly idealised by people who didn’t pay to watch football matches there. The backless seats installed on the lower tiers in 1990 after the Taylor Report’s poor findings. Prices were high and the facilities were insufficient. Urine flooded the concourses behind the goals.

In contrast, the new Wembley — opened in 2007 just before an awful FA Cup final between United and Chelsea — is considered one of the best football stadiums in the world. For a start, you can see the pitch clearly. Of course, the trips to Cardiff for cup finals while the new Wembley was being built were mostly enjoyable, in part because the Principality Stadium is in the middle of the city. But Wembley is where fans sing about going.

When fans sing ‘Glory, Glory Man United’, it’s not a song about celebrating finishing fourth or signing players, it’s about lifting silverware and recognising the game’s ultimate victory.

These are the greatest moments as a football fan. There would be no parade in Manchester if Erik ten Hag’s side won the league cup (though Newcastle held one after losing the 1998 FA Cup final to Arsenal), but a cup is a cup.

And right now, that would matter for Manchester United.

(Top photo: Tony Marshall/EMPICS via Getty Images)