1971 Football League Cup Final

The 1971 Football League Cup Final took place in February 1971 at Wembley Stadium. It was the eleventh Football League Cup final and the fifth to be played at Wembley.

It was contested between Tottenham Hotspur and Aston Villa. At the time, Tottenham Hotspur was riding high in the First Division (the top level of league football in England at that time) and Aston Villa, the most successful club of the late Victorian and Edwardian eras and a traditional heavyweight, was stuck in the ignominy of the old Third Division (then the third tier of English football), to which it had never previously sunk.

Despite the disparity in the teams' league positions, Aston Villa dominated proceedings. According to Peter Morris, in his "Aston Villa: The First 100 Years" (1974) the team was so impressive that "it was hard to believe they were the same players" who contested Third Division matches. Creating several scoring opportunities, Villa saw a shot by Andy Lochhead cleared off the line and another by Ian 'Chico' Hamilton hit the angle of post and bar with the goalkeeper beaten. However, the extra class of Spurs eventually told, as Martin Chivers, who had hardly touched the ball all game, scored Tottenham's first on 79 minutes after the ball was deflected into his path close in by a Villa defender. Three minutes later he scored a second, running through a Villa defence worn out by its efforts at marking him. The match finished 2–0 to Spurs.

Tottenham Hotspur, having been presented with the cup despite being outplayed for almost the whole match, took it to the end where their supporters were gathered. Eyewitnesses confirm that many of the Spurs fans laughed at their own team for parading around the ground with the cup after receiving such a roasting. The beaten Aston Villa players however embarked on a lap of honour around the stadium and were greeted by what Morris described as "the greatest ovation ever given to a losing team at Wembley" (op cit). The Birmingham Evening Mail headlined its report "The day that Villa might have won it." In this classic contest of brash big boy against sad old fallen giant, it was clear where the sympathies of the neutral lay.

Although Tottenham went on to regain the trophy two years later, the match was the first manifestation of a dramatic change of fortune for Aston Villa, which won the Football League Championship (equivalent to today's Premiership) ten years later and the European Cup the following year, having claimed two League Cups along the way.

External links

* [http://www.soccerbase.com/results3.sd?gameid=259769 Match summary on Soccerbase]