Steve McClaren's memories of Middlesbrough's Carling Cup win

Middlesbrough’s Carling Cup run started with a nondescript home win over Brighton and featured six matches before they faced Bolton Wanderers in the final. There were some scares along the way, most notably in the games against Everton and Tottenham that went to penalties, as well as a dramatic two-legged semi-final against Arsenal

Steve McClaren:

It was our third year in charge, and before the season even started, I think we made a conscious effort to target the cup competitions because we thought we could do well in them. We’d kind of scraped through the first year, and even though we got to the semi-final of the FA Cup, it felt as though we were finding our feet a bit really.

The second year, we asked Steve (Gibson) to buy a bit, and he kind of did. So, by year three, we felt as though we were starting to get a team together. We had Juninho back, Mendieta, Boateng, and we felt like we had a good cup team. We could beat anyone on our day. We could lose to anyone as well mind, but that’s probably what a cup team is.

That said though, I don’t think many of the senior players were that happy when I picked them for the first game against Brighton. It was a time when managers were starting to go a bit weaker in the early rounds of the League Cup, but the previous season, I’d played a much younger team in the League Cup against Ipswich and we’d got beat 3-1, and Steve went mad. He said, ‘Look, we’re a cup team. FA Cup, League Cup – they’re important to us. So, I never did that again. The season we won it, it was a conscious effort to go strong right from the start.

Even so, though, if you go back to the very start of the run, it almost didn’t happen. The Brighton match at the Riverside was a horrible game. They were in what is now League One, but we just couldn’t get going at all and it looked for all the world as if it was going to penalties before Malcolm (Christie) popped up in extra-time. Then we went to Wigan in the next round and that was a scrappy old night too.

Like every cup run, it kind of snowballed really. We had the two penalty wins against Everton and Spurs and they were obviously massive moments. I’ve always been someone that gets the lads to practice penalties if there’s a chance they could end up in a shootout, but as a manager on the sidelines, it always feels like penalties are the toss of a coin when they’re happening. Thankfully, we had lads that held their nerve – I’ll never forget Franck (Queudrue) scoring the winner at White Hart Lane. It had got to sudden death by then, and I was thinking, ‘Oh no, not Franck’. Fair play to him though.

We obviously got Arsenal in the semis, and on paper it looked like the toughest draw. But I remember sitting with the rest of the coaching staff in the dressing room at Highbury when Arsene Wenger’s team sheet came through for the first leg. I looked at it and straight away said, ‘You know what, we’ve got a chance here, you know’. Arsenal were always my bogey team – forget Man United, Liverpool, whatever. I never got anything at Arsenal. But that was one night I fancied us and Juninho came up with the goods.

Arsene went stronger for the second leg, but with Bolo scoring and then the sending off (of Martin Keown), it just became a case of closing it out. Thankfully, we were able to see it through.

With Wembley out of service because of its redevelopment, the final was staged at Cardiff’s Millennium Stadium. It was McClaren’s first taste of managing in a major final, so the build-up to the game was always going to be key.

Steve McClaren:

When you look at the week leading up to the final, I think it was the staff that won it for me really. We’d spent ages planning what we were going to do in cup-final week, but then the Saturday before, we played Newcastle up at St James’ and got beat 2-1 even though we’d taken the lead. I was raging, furious, and normally I’d have torn a strip off them to make my feelings known.

But I remember as soon as the game finished, Bill (Beswick) coming over to me and saying, ‘Right, whatever you do in the next few minutes, don’t you lose it. Don’t you go tearing into them - this is the moment important week of the season – don’t let the lads head into it on a really negative vibe.

I was a bit hot-headed in those days, but Bill was adamant we couldn’t go into cup-final week on the back of a real blow out. Looking back, that was probably key.

I got the staff in on the Sunday and said, ‘Right, we’ve got to get this week right’. I wanted to start Monday morning with a big debrief of the Newcastle game, but again the message was, ‘Look, just this once, forget it. Don’t go poring over it, don’t go highlighting a load of mistakes, just park it and move on’. That’s what we did.

I think the players appreciated that, and I think it was also important that I was persuaded to scale back a lot of what I wanted to do. I’d come up with a plan and basically filled the week, but the rest of staff, to a man, said, ‘What the hell is that? They’re brains are going to be fried by the Sunday’. I said, ‘Yeah, but you know what Sam’s like. We’ve got to cover this, and this, and this’. But they were adamant it had to be less not more.

They reined me in. I always over-prepare, but I’ve learned you don’t need to do that in the build-up to such a big game. The theme of the week was, ‘We’re going to try to do this easy’, to the point that the coaching team were insistent that, on the Wednesday, we were going to have a tennis tournament at David Lloyd’s in Middlesbrough. I said, ‘We’re not’, but they wouldn’t let it drop.

So on the Wednesday, four days before the biggest game I’d been involved in as a manager, there we were – all the staff and players – playing in a tennis tournament. I thought it was mad, but we did it and a it was a great day. I won the tournament, so we were all in a good mood!

We had a normal Thursday and Friday, and then we travelled on the Saturday and trained on Cardiff’s ground, the old Ninian Park. We trained on the Saturday afternoon and then stayed in Cardiff on the Saturday night.

The final resulted in a 2-1 win for Middlesbrough, with early goals from Joseph-Desire Job and Bolo Zenden proving key. Bizarrely, however, McClaren didn’t really see either – although he was happy to be able to celebrate with Steve Gibson after the final whistle.

Steve McClaren:

I was pleased by how relaxed everyone was on the Saturday night, and then we got up on the Sunday and had a team meeting together with a great motivational video. We’d put together the speech from ‘Any Given Sunday’ and put it over action clips of all the lads doing something really good, a goal, a save, a tackle whatever. We kept the team talk really brief then went straight into that.

After watching the film, I think we all looked at each other and just quietly nodded and said, ‘They’re ready’. I got on the bus and someone asked me, ‘How do you feel’, and I just said, ‘You know what, I actually feel surprisingly good’. Then we went to the stadium and went through all the pre-match routines.

We did the walk-on, and back in those days, I was really superstitious. I had to wear a tracksuit during the games, but obviously to come out with the team, I had to wear a suit. So as soon as the formalities were over, I dashed back down the tunnel, into the dressing room to get changed. That’s why I missed both of our goals. By the time I got back to the bench, we were 2-0 up!

I missed the first one entirely. I was in the dressing room, probably half changed, and this huge roar went up. My first reaction was, ‘Oh no, someone’s scored – does it sound like us or does it sound like them?’ That quickened me up a bit, and I was thinking, ‘Okay, if it’s them, don’t worry, there’s plenty of time left yet’.

As I was going down the tunnel, people were telling me we were 1-0 up, but then just before I got to the entrance, blow me, there’s a massive roar again. I dashed out just as Bolo was scoring his two-kick penalty – thankfully before the days of VAR.

Two-nil up in the first ten minutes of the final – it’s a dream scenario really – but as a manager, you’re always on your guard. I remember thinking, ‘Right, we have to win now or I’m going to end up looking like a right idiot’.

From being nice and relaxed, suddenly I was really nervous, which is ridiculous really when you’re winning 2-0. Davies pulled a goal back midway through the first half, but from that point on, hand on heart, there was never really a moment where I felt we were in trouble.

That was probably a reflection of the quality of the defence. Schwarzer in goal, centre-halves of Southgate and Ehiogu and then Boateng and Doriva as a double screen in front – if you’re picking a team to hold on to a lead, that would pretty much be it.

I wouldn’t say I was confident, but we were confident, and apart from his howler, Schwarzer was having a terrific game. It just seemed our day, and that was obviously the way it panned out.

My overriding memory from after the game was just making sure that Steve enjoyed it. I’m delighted the enduring photograph is of him being lifted up with all the champagne spraying. It was a massive day for all of us, but he’d put his life and soul into the football club and I was really pleased that moment was about him.

Middlesbrough’s victory sparked huge celebrations on Teesside, and kicked off a remarkable two-year spell that also saw the club reach their first European final. To this day, McClaren remains the only Boro boss to have won a major trophy, something he continues to cherish.

Steve McClaren:

The shame about winning the League Cup as opposed to the FA Cup is that you don’t get the same time to enjoy it. If you win the FA Cup, that’s it for the season and you can have a real blow out. We didn’t even stay in Cardiff on the night of the final because we had another game at Birmingham on the Wednesday.

We travelled straight home, and that was a shame really. I’m sure a few of the lads did something, but there was nothing organised for us all to get involved in because of the game at Birmingham a few days later. We lost that 3-1, so in hindsight, maybe we should have just said, ‘To hell with it’ and gone out and had a party!

The bus parade was special, but again we had to delay it a bit because there were other matches and commitments to fit in. I wouldn’t day it dampened it, but it would obviously have been better to have a week blocked off where we could have really celebrated.

For me and the rest of the coaches, it was more about satisfaction than anything else. That was the breakthrough really, for us as a management staff and also as a team. On a personal level, the question that was always asked of me was, ‘Can you go to a number one from being a number two?’ That provided the answer.

As a team, it showed we were going in the right direction, and it meant I could go to Steve the following summer and say, ‘Right, what we need to get to the next level is this, this and this – and I think we’ve earned the right to get it’.

To be fair to Steve, he delivered. Joseph Job was great for us, but we felt we needed an upgrade. Juninho had done great things in the cup run, but it was clear his time was coming to an end. We needed something to kick us on to the next level, especially because we were going to be playing in Europe, and that summer Steve did really well and splashed out on Viduka and Hasselbaink.

Would he have done that if we hadn’t won the Carling Cup? Probably not. But it built the basis of the team that went on to make the UEFA Cup final a couple of seasons later.

Those years were really special, and I think all Boro fans will probably agree that, looking back, I don’t think any of us fully appreciated the scale of what we were doing while it was going on.

They were the glory days, but we didn’t make enough of it. The Three Legends were still ripping us apart on the radio, and then there I was on that day against Villa, having a season-ticket thrown in my face! I was thinking, ‘Wow, I’m nearly out of a job here’, and yet there we were a few months later playing in Eindhoven. That’s football for you, I guess.