LONDON — The first trophy of the English season was claimed on Sunday, and in some style, as Chelsea and Liverpool played a Carabao Cup final for the ages at Wembley (a replay streamed on ESPN+). The sides combined to put the ball into the back of the net on four occasions, only to go up the offside flag after each instance. Yet, despite the dramatics, 120 pointless minutes passed.
Edouard Mendy and Kaomhin Kelleher were largely the cause. They were nothing short of brilliant, each keeping their team in the competition multiple times. And, in fact, the keepers will determine this final.
Kepa Arrizabalaga was introduced for the shootout, replacing Mendy in the final moments of extra time. He and Kelleher failed to stop any of the first 20 penalty attempts, and the Liverpool keeper did not try. 21, only for spot-kick specialist Kepa to see his effort well over the bar saw the Reds win an 11-10 penalty shootout.
So, what can we take away from Sunday's actual Epic Games? Mark Ogden (Liverpool) and James Ole (Chelsea) break up the competition from both perspectives.
Liverpool
Jurgen Klopp has now won five trophies as Liverpool manager. In three months' time, they can add three more and make history by becoming the first English team to achieve a quadrupling of the Carabao Cup, FA Cup, Premier League and Champions League at the same time.
At this point in time, with still plenty of games to play, achieving a clean sweep of competitions appears to be a formidable challenge, but the Carabao Cup penalty shootout win against Chelsea means Liverpool are already a quarter on the way to an unprecedented feat .
Manchester United's triple success in 1999, when Sir Alex Ferguson's team won the league, the FA Cup and the Champions League, remains a high-water mark in the English game. Liverpool managed their own cup treble by winning both the domestic cup and the UEFA Cup in 2001, and Manchester City won all three domestic trophies in 2019, but none ever came close to a quadruple.
Yet Liverpool now have the opportunity to do so after overcoming Chelsea to win the Carabao Cup for a record ninth time.
In this game, Liverpool undoubtedly tried their luck. Christian Pulisic and Mason Mount both missed clear first-half chances to score for Chelsea before Mount hit the post early in the second half. Kai Havertz then dismissed two goals for offside, with Romelu Lukaku scoring another goal while the Chelsea forward was initially onside in video replays.
Despite the opportunities created by Chelsea, and their own failure to create enough opportunities, Liverpool still found a way to get their hands on the trophy. What about the other three competitions they can still win?
The Premier League appears to be the biggest mountain to climb in the coming weeks, but with City 12 points behind City earlier this month, Liverpool are now just six behind, with a game in hand and Etihad's schedule to come in April. The journey is yet to come. Liverpool have little margin for error in the league, but they have at least made themselves firmly back in the race.
For the FA Cup, Klopp's side face Premier League bottom side Norwich City in the fifth round on Wednesday at Anfield (3pm ET, live stream on ESPN+). Win that and they will take three wins from their first FA Cup since 2006.
And then there is the Champions League, a competition that Liverpool has won six times more times than any English club. They face Internazionale at Anfield in the second leg of the round of 16 on 8 March with a 2–0 aggregate lead, knowing they will not be afraid of any remaining clubs in a quarter-final draw. Liverpool know how to proceed and succeed in the Champions League, so they will have confidence that they can win it again this season.
Winning all four trophies will require luck, however, both in terms of results and the fitness of the key players. Liverpool have had good luck this season. He has suffered some disfiguring injuries and winger Luis Diaz was included in the squad in January.
Diaz has already impressed, while Diogo Jota continues to deliver with goals and assists. And against Chelsea, Kelleher made several important saves to prove his quality as Alison's understudy.
Chelsea
The best thing that can be said for Kepa here is that at least he continues his habit of setting penalty shootouts.
Kepa's intervention - destroying the 22nd and final penalty on the crossbar to give Liverpool an 11–10 win - was not in Chelsea's favor, the product of a decision that, while established in statistical reasoning, was nonetheless was clearly at odds with what had gone before. Mendy had knocked out Liverpool in the last 120 minutes to such an extent that he was a strong favorite to be named man of the match, and he had done more than enough to earn his place in Chelsea's goal for the shootout.
This trick of weeding on Kepa has worked before. In August's UEFA Super Cup final, Tuchel made the same change and Kepa saved two penalties after beating Villarreal 6–5 in a shootout.
No one in Chelsea's history has saved more penalties than Kepa - 10 total, eight in shootouts, including in the last-16 leg of this season's Carabao Cup against Southampton. The club's internal data shows Kepa is a better shootout shot stopper than Mendy, even though the Senegalese No 1 proved his skill by saving a spot kick in the recent Africa Cup of Nations final against Egypt.
However, the change felt counter-productive here. This highly entertaining final was denied a goal in two hours of football due to a number of factors: flawed finishing, the toughest of VAR offside decisions that negated Lukaku and Kelher's impressive performances for Liverpool. However, Mendy was arguably the biggest influence in this final, justifying his selection ahead of Kepa from the start.
Kepa played every match on the road for Wembley, and the club has been impressed by the improvements he has made to his game in recent months, which manifested in a series of consistent appearances while Mendy was engaged at AFCON last month. Yet sources told ESPN that Chelsea would listen to Kepa's offers, and if there was any doubt as to whether the 27-year-old would be encouraged to leave this summer, this showpiece at Wembley shrugged it off.
It comes three years after Kepa refused a substitute in the 2019 Carabao Cup final ahead of a penalty shootout. If Kepa leaves England at the end of the season, he will not miss the competition in the slightest.
That brutal story proved to be a temporary distraction to Ukraine's ongoing invasion, a situation that has been uneasy for Chelsea after Russian boss Roman Abramovich announced his intention to pass on the Blues' leadership to the club's trustees on Saturday evening. feels close. Flags of Ukraine adorn the ends of Liverpool, where supporters cheered the English national anthem before kickoff, but by the end of an absorbing contest, Kepa's plight offered sports respite from the tense political backdrop.
It's a curious quirk that had Kepa started the game, Chelsea might not have even received a penalty, but if Mendy had ended the game they could have won it in a shootout.
Kepa never looked like saving any of Liverpool's 11 penalties. Even as Virgil van Dijk lined up his spot kick as he stood to the left of centre, the Dutchman did not stop his effort on that side of the goal, easily beating his opponent. Certainly Kepa was not brought in to collect the penalty, but after 20 successful conversions, he could not match the more mature manner in which Kelleher threw the ball to his feet.
It is tempting to conclude that Tuchel pondered this.
"I feel bad for him, but no blame, of course," Tuchel said of Kepa. "Kepa has more time on the training ground [for penalties] than Edu, who plays a lot.
"No regrets, I completely take the blame on me. I definitely take responsibility."
Once Liverpool lifted the trophy, Chelsea players headed into the dressing room. Last to go was Mendy. Had he been allowed to hang around in the game a little longer, the result could have been very different.