On This Day – 29th February
In the Euro ’96 anthem ‘Three Lions’, David Baddiel and Frank Skinner use the phrase “30 years of hurt”. This is referring to the period of time between the 1966 World Cup win, England’s last trophy before the Euro 96 championships.
This is nothing in comparison to the poor fans of Middlesbrough who had to wait for a whopping 128 years to finally win a trophy. They finally lifted the League Cup on this day back in 2004 and this is their only major honour to date.
A 2-1 victory over Sam Allardyce’s Bolton Wanderers at the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff finally broke Boro’s trophy duck. Their fans celebrated long and hard after the victory in the Welsh capital.
The man who led Middlesbrough to the League Cup triumph was a certain Steve Mc Claren, who would become England manager two years after lifting the trophy.
The Final itself was a very scrappy game and came to life after less than two minutes on the clock.
Middlesbrough took the lead with forward Joseph Desire-Job sliding in from close-range to find the back of the net from a Boudewijn Zenden cross.
The two would then be directly involved with Boro’s second after just seven minutes when Job was brought down and Zenden fired a penalty straight down the centre of the goal to make it 2-0 to the Teesiders.
After losing in both the 1997 League and FA Cup Finals and the League Cup Final again in 1998, Boro were determined to hold on to their lead an finally lift a trophy.
Kevin Davies found the back of the net after Mark Schwarzer let Davies’s tame effort go past him at the near post on 21 minutes but Middlesbrough held on and lifted their first major honour.
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