And then there were two. Chelsea and Liverpool are the last teams standing in this season’s League Cup and on Sunday evening, one will be back up Wembley’s steps lifting that 63-year-old trophy in front of a sell-out crowd of close to 90,000.
These are the occasions when the League Cup looks in rude health; a final watched in 194 territories around the world and still a cherished staging post in the English football calendar.
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Yet beneath the veneer is a competition that fears its days are numbered.
Abolishing two-legged semi-finals remain part of an ongoing debate between the EFL and Premier League ahead of UEFA and FIFA expanding their club competitions next season and a squeezed football calendar will eventually demand domestic sacrifices.
The Athletic analyses the League Cup’s future.
We’ve been talking about the League Cup being under threat for years, haven’t we?
Indeed we have. The League Cup has long been English football’s poor relation. It lacks the history of the FA Cup (it only started in 1961) and offers little of the Premier League’s prestige. Fighting for relevance in a crowded field became its greatest battle and one it appears destined to lose.
Ground has gradually been conceded across the past 30 years to reflect its diminishing status. Two-legged ties for the first and second round were ditched for the 2001-02 season, as were replays after the 1996-97 campaign. Even extra-time was scrapped for the 2018-19 competition, with all ties except the final going straight to penalties.
It can offer few financial rewards beyond gate receipts (this weekend’s winners will receive just £100,000) and, as such, clubs from the Premier League and EFL struggle to find the incentives to target an extended run. Wholesale changes, particularly in the early rounds, have become a given.
That is not to suggest it has no meaning. For the 11th year in succession, it will be lifted by a member of the Premier League’s ‘Big Six’, so the elite still see the League Cup as something worth winning. But do not confuse that with an endorsement of its long-term future. Plenty would happily see it disappear.
“Eliminate competitions, take out this competition,” Pep Guardiola, a four-time winner as Manchester City manager, said in January 2020.
That was also the year of Project Big Picture, radical plans that proposed abolishing both the League Cup and Community Shield, as well as cutting the Premier League from 20 clubs to 18.
Among its most vocal supporters was EFL chairman Rick Parry. A turkey voting for Christmas on first glance, but sacrificing the League Cup, the EFL’s crown jewel, promised to see the 72 clubs handsomely compensated in a revised distribution model.
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Project Big Picture crashing and burning killed off that prospect, but the League Cup is still acutely aware of its own mortality. It only needs to look at France, who scrapped its version of the League Cup – the Coupe de la Ligue – in 2019. England is now the only one of the big five European footballing nations with two knockout competitions.
So what challenges is the League Cup facing in 2024?
The two greatest dangers to its viability come from Switzerland, the home of UEFA and FIFA. It is there where a fresh squeeze has been placed upon football’s calendar and something will eventually have to give.
Next season is a significant one. Not only does the 2024-25 campaign introduce UEFA’s expanded Champions League format, it ends with a revamped 32-team FIFA Club World Cup spanning 29 days in the USA.
Those changes will see four English clubs (possibly five) being asked to play an additional two Champions League group games, while Manchester City and Chelsea, already assured of qualification for the Club World Cup, could have as many as seven games tagged on to the end of their season. Any English clubs featuring in the Europa League will also have eight group games, up from six, to navigate next term.
UEFA and FIFA want their elite club competitions to grow and the by-product is suffocating others in the ecosystem. The League Cup, which generates only £90million a season through central payments and direct earnings across its 92 competitors, stands little chance of prospering, but in a bigger debate, it remains a bargaining chip for the EFL to play.
Talks over English football’s New Deal continue to drag on, with the Premier League and EFL unable to agree on a revised distribution model. Its complexities are best explained at length here, but the League Cup is one of many moving parts being discussed.
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The Premier League have pushed to see two-legged semi-finals axed from next season, meaning the most League Cup games that a club competing in Europe would need to play falls from six to five.
The EFL are open to the suggestion, as are the Football Association with scrapping replays in the FA Cup third and fourth round. Bowing to the Premier League’s wishes, however, calls for something in return.
Parry made that clear when appearing alongside the Premier League’s chief executive Richard Masters at a Select Committee hearing called by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCSMS) last month.
“As part of a new deal, we are prepared to take on board considerable loss of revenue to our clubs from the loss of FA Cup replays, from the second leg of the Carabao Cup semi-final,” said Parry.
“We are absolutely not prepared to concede those on the basis there is no deal. There is no presumption that the Premier League can just change the fixture schedule and we will fall into line without proper compensation.”
The EFL then made a pointed play eight days later when announcing outline dates for their 2024-25 season. Retained, though not set in stone, were those two-legged semi-finals.
“As it stands, there is no agreement in place to make any changes to the Carabao Cup’s two-legged semi-final format, which continues to provide significant financial benefit to EFL clubs,” said EFL chief executive Trevor Birch.
Is there really no room in the schedule?
There’s still space, but only just. A glance at the 2024-25 calendar tells us as much.
From the next Premier League season, which starts on August 17 and ends on May 25, 2025, there are 38 midweek slots available when discounting those taken up by Boxing Day and New Year’s Day commitments.
That sounds like plenty, but eight of those are immediately lost to international breaks, while UEFA will now ringfence 18 more to include qualification play-offs, group stages and knockout rounds of an expanded Champions League. Then there are two midweek rounds of the Premier League, as well as the top flight’s winter break eliminating another three.
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That leaves nine for English football’s two knock-out competitions and the Premier League’s contingency weeks, hence this ongoing debate over FA Cup replays in the third and fourth round and two-legged semi-finals in the League Cup.
There is a quiet acceptance that both will disappear in time, but – and it’s a big but – only when the EFL and Football Association make the call.
The English football calendar is drawn up and agreed upon each year by all the stakeholders and it is ultimately the EFL’s choice, via its 72 clubs voting, as to when it scraps two-legged semi-finals or, should the time ever come, the whole competition. That is their leverage in the debate and something they will not surrender without seeking compensation from the Premier League.
The final five games of every League Cup season (four semi-final ties and a final) have long been considered the EFL’s most valuable fixtures. TV rights for the League Cup are sold as part of an EFL bundle covering the Championship, League One, League Two, EFL Trophy and play-offs, and Parry has previously said their main knockout competition accounts for “60 per cent plus” of that revenue.
Losing two semi-final ties, typically involving attractive Premier League clubs, would chip away at the League Cup’s value, but The Athletic has been told it would not bring a financial penalty to the EFL’s new five-year TV deal beginning from 2024-25. That new contract, agreed last May, is worth £187million to the EFL, a 50 per cent rise on the deal expiring at the end of this season. All 93 League Cup ties will be broadcast live for the first time, but there will no rebate necessary, as per an agreed clause, if the figure drops to 91.
Is anyone out there still in favour of the League Cup and what might it look like in the future?
The League Cup has an enduring value to plenty of clubs further down the pyramid. Just ask AFC Wimbledon, who were drawn to play away to Chelsea this season, two years after being paired with Arsenal at the Emirates Stadium. Those two ties will likely have earned the League Two club over £500,000 in shared gate receipts alone.
Every season offers the promise of a windfall to those further down the pyramid and being picked for TV coverage by Sky Sports brings a facility fee starting from £75,000 in the first round.
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The sums up for grabs are much smaller than those on offer through the FA Cup, where this season’s winners will accumulate £4.4million in prize money alone, but the rewards are not insignificant for those outside of the Premier League. Liverpool and Chelsea, meanwhile, both stand to make an estimated £1m each from gate receipts at Wembley on Sunday.
Supporters are fond of the competition, too. The EFL say that over 1.4m fans have attended League Cup matches this season ahead of the final, the second-highest cumulative attendance since 2001-02.
Last month’s semi-final second leg between Fulham and Liverpool also drew a peak audience of 1.71m. Given the 2022 final between Liverpool and Chelsea had a peak audience of over 4million, a repeat of that fixture can expect to bring something similar from a UK audience on Sunday.
Yet the feeling persists that it will never be enough. The League Cup stands on an eroding cliff and expects no help from the Premier League. Losing two-legged semi-finals is sure to be the next step, but only a brave observer would predict a long life beyond that. If the EFL gets its wish and begins negotiating its broadcast deals alongside the Premier League for 2029-30, its existence cannot avoid being part of the debate.
Perhaps it will become a competition for clubs not competing in Europe. Perhaps all Premier League clubs eventually give it a swerve. All options will have to be on the table.
“UEFA doesn’t really like domestic cup competitions,” Parry told The Athletic in 2021. “You can either acknowledge that and accept that’s where life is, or you can try and fight it. Whatever happens, there needs to be an open conversation.”
That can be guaranteed, but the League Cup’s long-term viability cannot.
(Top photo: Laurence Griffiths/Getty Images)