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Victory at Wembley means the world to the city of Newcastle, united behind its club - Justin Setterfield/Getty Images
If you do not understand what winning the Carabao Cup final means to Newcastle United, if you cannot appreciate what this moment has unleashed in a football obsessed city, maybe this is not the game for you.
For 70 years Newcastle United fans have waited. For seven decades they had wondered what it would be like to see their team win a trophy at Wembley. A fanbase conditioned for disappointment, a fanbase with sore tongues used to licking the wounds of failure and frustration for so long.
Well the wait is over and the celebrations did not disappoint. Feral, wild, unabashed and unashamed. Newcastle is a party city, but it is a city not quite like any other in Britain. It is an emotional city, a proud city and one that knows how to have a good time. To never take itself too seriously, that understands the ‘work hard, play hard’ mantra as well as anyone.
If you have spent any length of time there you will know. The Geordies are hard people, strong people, but with hearts of gold. They are warm and friendly with their rough, unapologetic edges. Much like their accent.
And I suspect proper football fans are happy for them, deep down, they instinctively know what this is about. As begrudging as it might be, certainly that is the impression I got from Liverpool fans on Sunday. Geordies and Scousers are similar. They understand each other better than most.
You will have seen pictures of the celebrations in cities like Naples, Barcelona and Milan, well that was Newcastle last night. People hanging from lampposts, draped on the statues of Alan Shearer and Sir Bobby Robson.
Cars driving past, honking their horns, people screaming out of windows. This is what it meant. Seventy years of waiting decompressing like a can of fizzy pop smashed on the floor, spraying its contents out like a joyous fountain of release.
They have stuck with the club through the good times and the bad. They have watched them play against a backdrop of social upheaval, the city’s de-industrialisation, its transformation from depressed urban area into the confident, modern swaggering city it is today.
And standing tall on its hill, dominating the city skyline, visible no matter which direction you travel into the centre from, is St James’ Park. The cathedral on a hill is not a phrase the Geordies particularly like, but it is apt.
The one constant through the years of change was Newcastle United and its inability to win anything. They told jokes about it, they wrapped a dark humour around themselves like a comfort blanket, shielding them from the mocking jibes of rivals up and down the country. And still they came in their tens of thousands, a fortnightly pilgrimage to St James’ Park.
Newcastle United have always been a massive club, one of the biggest in England, but they never won anything. They always failed in the end. That has changed. Eddie Howe and his players have changed that.
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Eddie Howe (left), after winning Newcastle’s first major trophy for 56 years, alongside his team captain Bruno Guimaraes - Getty Images /Serena Taylor
Not Saudi Arabia, not the Kingdom’s Public Investment Fund that bought the club in 2021, not chairman Yasir Al-Rumayyan, who waved the Carabao Cup trophy around at Wembley, basking in its reflective glory.
You can talk about sports washing if you like, but there was not a single Newcastle United supporter giving it a second’s thought last night or this morning. This was about them and their city. This was their moment.
I know better than most what it means. My only small regret last night was that I was in London, the city of my birth, the city I’m from, and not back home in Newcastle with my family and friends.
Because Newcastle is very much my home. My wife is a Geordie, she and my two children are Newcastle fans. My daughter and my brother-in-law were at Wembley to witness the magnificence, the glory of their superb victory over Liverpool.
There were tears, so many tears. Men, women and children sobbing in the stands. Hugging strangers, falling into the arms of anyone wearing black and white. Laughter, cheers and euphoria, but mainly just tears.
You know that expression, you either laugh or cry, well they did both. Over and over again and did not stop until exhaustion took over and they slept. The best day of their lives? You’d better believe it.
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Newcastle fans celebrated for themselves but also for the generations who had never experienced anything like it - Charlotte Wilson/Offside via Getty Images
This was not just about those who were there or watching back home, it was about all those who were not. The relatives who had died, the family members or friends who introduced them to Newcastle United but did not get to see this happen.
To my father-in-law who passed away just before Christmas, who took my wife to her first game. I thought of him amid the delirious scenes at Wembley. A quiet, poignant moment of reflection. I spoke to him and heard his voice in my head, laughing. I pictured him with a glass of whisky in his hand, a tear formed. He called me a soft cockney b------ so I smiled instead.
Football matters in the North East because it is such a strong part of their identity. If you are born in Newcastle you support Newcastle. It is the same for Sunderland, their bitter rivals, but a club that shares so many similarities.
It is not a choice, it is a birthright. If you don’t like football – like my 10-year-old son – fine, but you support Newcastle United. And he does. It is impossible not to. This is not hyperbole, I know because I live there.
In many respects it is why I live there. I went to Newcastle University, at least partly, because of Kevin Keegan’s Entertainers side in the 1990s. I loved football and no city in England loves football more than Newcastle.
I stayed after university because I wanted to be a football reporter. I turned down jobs in London 20 years ago because I wanted to write about the day Newcastle won a trophy. Writing about Newcastle in Newcastle is a privilege because it matters so much.
You feel like you are doing something that matters to the people you are writing for. Every single day that feeling, now subconscious after so many years, is there. If football is the most important of the non-important things in life, where better to absorb yourself in it?
I became almost as obsessed with the quest for their Holy Grail as those who support the club. So, yes, I know what winning the Carabao Cup means. It would be impossible not to.
Everybody in Newcastle knows what is going on at Newcastle. I have lived next to an elderly couple for 20 years. They have never been to St James’ Park to watch a game, but they will always talk to me about Newcastle United when I see them. It is what binds the people together. It is unwritten but it is there. I cannot wait to see them.
And as the most powerful expression of civic pride, Newcastle United winning a trophy means Newcastle wins. The city’s self esteem is wrapped up in the fortunes of its football club and it has just experienced its greatest moment for 56 years, since the Fairs Cup win of 1969, celebrated a few months before the first astronauts landed on the moon.
The long wait is over, the trophy drought is over. No club in Europe has won a major trophy more recently than Newcastle United. Pause for a moment and let that sink in.
How long will it be until the next one? With Howe as manager and with an ambitious summer of recruitment planned, this could just be the start. What is it they say about London buses again?
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