Newcastle not yet an evil-empire side but cup final feels like a springboard

T rafalgar Square, Saturday evening. White smoke against a red sunset, the hot breath of a thousand singing voices wafting into the cold London air like pissed little doves. Wembley is still a day, a three-zone Oyster card journey and several cans away. But in a way, the 2023 League Cup final has already been under way for several hours.

They’ve braved the trains, the traffic and London prices. Whole towns have emptied for the weekend. Sam Fender and his band have come along for the party, and pump out a raucous version of Local Hero. Everyone wants a piece of this. And of course the game still means everything. But somehow there is also a larger undertaking here, the idea that what matters above all is their presence: a reclamation of turf, an assertion of self. We can win or we can lose. But either way, you will notice us again.

Does this still hold true when you are clutching your losing medals and your bitter memories, when Monday morning’s hangover has already pre-emptively set in? Perhaps. Or perhaps in retrospect, this final was the point at which a strong flag game and a well‑organised salt-of-the-earth defence ran up against the simple hard edges of superior sporting talent. You can pack the piazzas of London and sing your songs of civic identity. But you are, ultimately, still a team trying to defend against half a billion pounds’ worth of attacking talent with Dan Burn and Loris Karius.

There was little to fault in Newcastle’s effort or strategy here. They had plenty of the ball, won plenty of duels, created plenty of little half-openings, scrapped and suffered in all the right places. They tried to grasp control of the game in the second half, pressing high and pinging crosses into the box. Eddie Howe’s