The history of the Football League Cup

While it is sometimes seen as the poor relation to the FA Cup, by players, fans and by the media, the Football League Cup has provided the English game with more than its fair share of drama, thrills and spills since the inception of the tournament in the early 1960s. It has been frequently won by most of the biggest names in the English game, but it has also traditionally provided a route to potential glory and European football for smaller, less wealthy clubs. This was the case again only last year as Birmingham City defeated Arsenal in the final with a dramatic late goal.

The League Cup was created in 1960, on the 26th of September, as the result of a proposal put forward by Alan Hardaker, then the Football League Secretary. His plan involved both the enlargement of the Football League and the development of a new cup tournament designed to compensate clubs for the reduced number of league matches. As it turned out, the clubs rejected the expansion plans, but accepted the cup idea. The first ever League Cup final then turned out to be a thriller, with Aston Villa losing the opening leg 2-0 against Rotherham United, before overturning this in the second match to win 3-2 overall.
   
This format of a two-leg final continued until the 1966/67 season, which also saw the first League Cup final to be played at Wembley. Again this proved to be a fantastic match with West Bromwich Albion eventually defeated 3-2 by Queens Park Rangers. The already burgeoning population of the trophy increased further the following year, when the winners were granted entry into European competition but, throughout the 1970’s and 80’s the tournament was dominated by Liverpool, and they still hold the record for the most League Cup wins, with 7.

Like the FA Cup, the finals were played at the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff between 2000 and 2007, while the new Wembley was being built. In recent years, the trophy has been seen by the bigger clubs as a way of giving experience to their most promising young players.

Want to find out all of the latest football scores as they happen? Interested in finding out the latest betting offers? Get all this in one place at Footballscores.com today!