Wednesday 20 September 2017 23:17, UK
Jose Mourinho needs one more League Cup winners' medal to become the most successful manager in the competition's history. But the son of the man whose record he is trying to break stands in his way...
The Manchester United manager is the joint-record holder with Sir Alex Ferguson and Brian Clough on four League Cup triumphs.
Coincidentally, it is Clough's son Nigel who stands in Mourinho's way. His Burton Albion team are the visitors to Old Trafford in the third round of the Carabao Cup live on Sky Sports this Wednesday - which also happens to be the 13th anniversary of Brian's death.
The League Cup trophy was the first competition that Mourinho won in English football back in 2005 and he has continued to pursue it with a vigour that has become unusual in the modern era.
His success in the competition as a four-time winner is in stark contrast to his rivals. Incredibly, none of the other 91 current league managers have even won it once.
Mourinho won his second League Cup in 2007 and it was also the first piece of silverware that he claimed during his second spell at Chelsea. His United side are the reigning champions having beaten Southampton last season. Tellingly, in each of those four seasons, Mourinho's teams went on to win further trophies before the campaign was over.
It has proved a tried and trusted catalyst for success. Winning, as they say, becomes a habit. Speaking to Steve Sidwell last year, he acknowledged that the competition was always in Mourinho's sights at the start of the season. "He used to tell us that the League Cup was five games to get to Wembley and play for a trophy," said the former Chelsea midfielder.
In that sense, there are echoes of Clough senior, whose first major trophy with Nottingham Forest came in the 1978 League Cup final. He went on to retain the trophy the following year, with Forest going on to become two-time European Cup winners, and there were further back-to-back wins in the competition a decade later as well.
Clough himself recognised a kindred spirit in the months before his death in 2004. "I like the look of Mourinho," he said. "There's a bit of the young Clough about him. For a start, he's good looking and, like me, he doesn't believe in the star system. He's consumed with team spirit and discipline, and the players have to fit in with his pattern of play, and that's right."
Mourinho took those words to heart and later made a pilgrimage to the City Ground. "A lot of people say we have similarities and there are certainly coincidences," he wrote in the foreword to the 2015 book I Believe in Miracles.
"We all probably remember Clough's best quotes. 'I wouldn't say I am the best football manager there is,' he used to say, 'but I am in the top one.' I love that line.
"He had all that self-esteem and big self-belief. He was very confident about himself, and from what I know about him he was very comfortable with the attention. Maybe because Brian Clough was such a huge personality, with so much charisma, everyone remembers his quotes and the stories and a few people forget his talents.
"He didn't win two European Cups with Nottingham Forest just because of his charisma. History cannot delete what he and Nottingham Forest did - their results, the cups, the achievements, absolutely unbelievable achievements. I have huge respect for what they did. I think if Brian Clough was around today, we would get on."
One can only imagine how a rivalry between Jose Mourinho versus Brian Clough would have played out. Wednesday's game at Old Trafford is likely to be the closest that we get. Clough junior will be up against it if he is to stop Mourinho edging closer to that record fifth victory. But at least there is the possibility that the old man would have approved.
