The 2008 Football League Cup Final was a football match played on 24 February 2008. It was the first League Cup Final to be played at the new Wembley Stadium, and the first to be played in England since the old Wembley was demolished in 2000. The defending champions were Chelsea, who beat Arsenal in the 2007 Final at Cardiff's Millennium Stadium. The final was contested by Tottenham Hotspur, who beat Arsenal 6–2 on aggregate in the semi-final, and Chelsea, who beat Everton 3–1 on aggregate. Tottenham Hotspur defeated Chelsea 2–1, after extra time, winning their first trophy for 9 years.
Chelsea took the lead in the 37th minute through a Didier Drogba free kick. This goal made Drogba the first player to score in three League Cup Finals, having also done so in 2005 and 2007. A Wayne Bridge handball gave Tottenham a 68th-minute penalty, and Bulgarian Dimitar Berbatov converted from the spot. Three minutes into extra time, Jonathan Woodgate headed a Jermaine Jenas free kick onto Petr Čech, who in turn pushed it straight back onto Woodgate's head to score the winning goal.
The win was an important one for Tottenham as they secured UEFA Cup qualification for the following season, something they would not have achieved in the Premier League, as they finished 11th. For Chelsea, it was the second of four competitions in which they would finish as runners-up that season, after they lost to Manchester United in the Community Shield and ended up finishing as runners-up to the same team in the Premier League and the UEFA Champions League.
Famous quotes containing the words football, league, cup and/or final:
“You can’t be a Real Country unless you have A BEER and an airline—it helps if you have some kind of a football team, or some nuclear weapons, but at the very least you need a BEER.”
—Frank Zappa (1940–1993)
“He will deliver you from six troubles; in seven no harm shall touch you. In famine he will redeem you from death, and in war from the power of the sword. You shall be hidden from the scourge of the tongue, and shall not fear destruction when it comes. At destruction and famine you shall laugh, and shall not fear the wild animals of the earth. For you shall be in league with the stones of the field, and the wild animals shall be at peace with you.”
—Bible: Hebrew, Job 5:19-23.
“Sisters define their rivalry in terms of competition for the gold cup of parental love. It is never perceived as a cup which runneth over, rather a finite vessel from which the more one sister drinks, the less is left for the others.”
—Elizabeth Fishel (20th century)
“Only an attitude remains:
Time has transfigured them into
Untruth. The stone fidelity
They hardly meant has come to be
Their final blazon, and to prove
Our almost-instinct almost true:
What will survive of us is love.”
—Philip Larkin (1922–1986)