Maloney takes. And it’s in. It’s Ben Watson. It’s Ben Watson, for Wigan Athletic. They’ve surely won the FA Cup. For Dave Whelan. For Roberto Martinez. You just cannot write scripts like this.
Martin Tyler, Sky Sports commentator
Emmerson Boyce took a long, hard look in the mirror. He stared back at his game face. His war face, you could call it. Then he started to go through the lines that he wanted to sound inspirational in the most important pre-match huddle of his life.
“There were times when I would practise what I was going to say,” he says. “Sometimes it would come naturally. At other times I would wake in the middle of the night thinking, ‘Right, you’ve got to give an inspirational speech to all the players, they need to believe in you, so what are you going to say?’. I had to rehearse because I wasn’t a big talker in my playing career.”
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Boyce was the captain of Wigan Athletic, under Robert Martinez’s management, on the day they beat Manchester City in the 2013 FA Cup final. It is the 10th anniversary today and this weekend he will be one of the players joining Martinez, now the Portugal head coach, for a gala dinner at the DW Stadium.
They will be commemorating one of the biggest shocks at Wembley of all-time — the biggest, by some distance since the old Wembley was knocked down 20 years ago — and it began with Boyce preparing his routine in his hotel room. Just him, alone, and a mirror.
“I suffered from anxiety in big groups,” he explains. “To speak in front of all the team was daunting. It was something I had to overcome and, because it didn’t come naturally to me, I had to practise.
“I had my words prepared. But when we got started, I completely scrapped what I had planned. ‘Look around you,’ I told them, ‘we’ve got a chance to make history, to do something that will never be forgotten. Don’t leave this stadium with any regrets. Believe in each other, trust each other, fight for each other.’
“It was my role, as captain, to lead the rest of the players. It was my role to give my speech as confidently as I could and make sure every single player believed, ‘We can do it.’ I looked at the players’ faces and I knew something special was going to happen.”
A lot has happened in Martinez’s career since that epic day at Wembley: the Everton job, six years with Belgium’s national team, two World Cups, one European Championship, and now the next phase of his professional life with Portugal, managing Cristiano Ronaldo.
But he will never forget the feeling when the final whistle sounded at Wembley and the indescribable moment when he and his players took in what they had just done.
“When we were preparing for the final, we were looking at every single detail,” Martinez tells The Athletic. “But we had never dared, at any time, to think, ‘OK, how would it feel to win it?’
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“At the final whistle, there was just this beautiful moment, in the middle of a full stadium, when you could almost feel yourself breathing. It was a very strange and beautiful moment, that feeling of, ‘Oh wow, we’ve won it.’ I will always treasure that moment.”
Many remember Wimbledon versus Liverpool in 1988 — “the Crazy Gang have beaten the Culture Club”, to quote the BBC commentator John Motson — as the most seismic shock at any FA Cup final.
Yet what happened 25 years later surely measures up against that achievement. Wimbledon had finished seventh in the old First Division in the year Vinnie Jones, John Fashanu and their comrades got to grips with Liverpool. A quarter of a century on, it was a much bigger imbalance of talent.
On the one hand, there was Wigan — little, patronised Wigan — who had never been past the quarter-finals and spent most of their existence among the puddles and potholes of the lower leagues.
Wigan had a shiny new stadium, bankrolled by chairman Dave Whelan, but rarely filled it. They were in their eighth season of the Premier League but their town was more associated with rugby league. Football-wise, they had never won anything more prestigious than the 1999 Auto Windscreens Shield and, as it was known in 1985, the Freight Rover Trophy.
City, on the other hand, were almost five years into the Abu Dhabi project that had changed the landscape of English football and made them the most financially endowed club on the planet.
“If you asked anyone, other than the players or fans, to name our team, I bet no one could do it,” says Ben Watson, the substitute who made himself a hero. “Then you look at City’s team and it was full of superstars: Joe Hart in goal; Yaya Toure, David Silva, Gareth Barry and Samir Nasri in midfield; Carlos Tevez and Sergio Aguero in attack; Vincent Kompany, Gael Clichy and on and on. All of them were top internationals. Player for player, they were miles better than us.”
This was the team put together by Roberto Mancini, a serial champion in his own right, and the previous season it had finished with City winning their first Premier League title.
They had beaten Wigan in seven successive matches, with an aggregate score of 13-0, and were 40 points above their opponents in the table. Three days after the final, Wigan became the first club to win the FA Cup and get relegated in the same year. They have never been back to England’s top division and have just dropped into League One, English football’s third tier, crippled by financial problems.
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“Before the final, the FA got in touch to ask us to name the songs we wanted them to play at Wembley if we won,” says Jonathan Jackson, then Wigan’s chief executive. “We picked some songs that recognised Wigan’s links to Northern Soul. But I remember discussing these songs with the staff and we were all saying, ‘This is a bit daft, none of us can see us beating Man City, but we’ll pick some songs anyway just on the off-chance’.
“It was a mindset of, ‘OK, let’s just enjoy the day, enjoy the occasion.’ Wigan Athletic in an FA Cup final? It’s something we would never have dreamed of.”
The memories are particularly special for Jackson given that his father, Stan, was a director at Wigan in the early 1970s when the club were in the Northern Premier League. A large part of Jackson’s childhood was spent on the mossy terraces of Springfield Park, Wigan’s old ground.
“Our main rivals were Stafford Rangers, Altrincham, Matlock Town and, locally, Chorley. We were seen as a big non-League team, in a fairly big stadium, and we were quite successful at that level. But we also tried 34 times to get into the Football League and failed every time until 1978 when we replaced Southport.
“It was my father, in 1995, who went to Dave Whelan because we were looking for a new shirt sponsor. For many years, we had been sponsored by Heinz. We had no money and we were bottom of what is now League Two.
“My father wanted to know if JJB (Whelan’s sportswear company) would sponsor the shirts. And, after him saying no a couple times, we finally got a yes. Within weeks, Dave said to my father: ‘I’m going to buy the football club now’.
“Everything changed from that point onwards. It was a remarkable journey. We’d been to Goole Town and Bangor City. Then we found ourselves at the Emirates and Old Trafford and now we were at Wembley to play the best team in the country. May 11, 2013, was the culmination of that journey.”
It was the night before the final when the first reports started to circulate that Mancini’s time in Manchester might be up.
They originated from Chile and the headline news was that Manuel Pellegrini was going to leave Malaga, in Spain’s La Liga, to replace him. City had not been able to defend the Premier League title and the club had gone behind Mancini’s back to line up the Chilean.
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As became apparent over the coming days and weeks, many City players were not heartbroken to see Mancini go. But he was a hero to the fans and they made that clear at Wembley with mutinous chants of: “You can stick your Pellegrini up your a—”. Mancini was sacked two days after the final, exactly a year since winning the league.
“Perhaps Mancini had taken the club as far as he could,” David Mooney, a City fan and author, writes in his 2013 book, The Man Who Restored Pride, about the Italian’s reign in Manchester. “Maybe his management style was losing its effect, meaning he couldn’t reach his previous heights.
“Whatever the downsides, though, Mancini did deserve at least some more dignity in his sacking. With rumours having leaked the night before the final, it put a huge dampener on his preparations. No matter what anyone says about the professionalism of the players, there will have been some effect on his work before the match.”
The timing certainly worked in Wigan’s favour. “There was no pressure on us; it was all on City,” says Watson. “There was a lot of talk about Mancini getting the sack. They weren’t a particularly happy camp. We kinda took advantage of that.”
Wigan, however, had problems of a different nature: an injury list including Gary Caldwell, Maynor Figueroa, Ivan Ramis and Jean Beausejour. Martinez’s tactical system – “ahead of his time,” says Jackson – was to play attacking wing-backs but his usual choices were unavailable. For the final, the positions were filled by two midfielders, James McArthur and Roger Espinoza, in a patched-up XI.
Yet Wigan’s team, like the town, had soul.
Maybe they also had a point to prove bearing in mind the lopsided nature of the media coverage in the build-up to the final. The Daily Telegraph, to name but one, predicted a 4-0 City win.
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“I remember how many people turned out to wave us off on the train from Wigan to London,” says Jackson. “We were staying at the Hilton opposite Wembley and, on the morning of the match, I woke up at 6am. Although I was CEO, I was still a fan at heart. I had my 10-year-old son with me and we went for a walk around Wembley. There wasn’t another soul around and I felt something inside me. I knew it was a really special day and I was trying to absorb every moment.”
Whelan had been given special permission to lead out the team and that itself was a wonderful story given that he, as a Blackburn Rovers player, had broken his leg in the 1960 FA Cup final against Wolverhampton Wanderers.
“Walking out was very special,” says Martinez. “What made it even more special was to have my chairman in front of me. It was a unique moment. He’d never had closure. The FA Cup had broken his career.
“We had asked if he could lead out the team for the semi-final (against Millwall). The FA said, ‘No, but you can do it in the final.’ It was very important for me that he should get some sort of closure; a chairman who had given so much to the town and the club.”
What subsequently unfolded would make a mockery of the media coverage that included a BBC bulletin, six minutes in, to announce: “Wigan have completed a pass.”
Wigan recovered from a difficult start. They were quick to the ball, strong in the tackle and withstood City’s early pressure. They held their own. Then they started to show that they, too, could pass the ball beautifully. They took control. “We deserved to win,” says Martinez. And he’s right: what happened was no fluke.
“City started well,” says Watson. “After 20 minutes, our goalkeeper, Joel Robles, had already made a couple of crucial saves. One was from Tevez. I was sitting next to Gary Caldwell on the bench and we looked at each other. It was a feeling like, ‘This could be our day, you know.’ We were growing into the game, starting to control the play.”
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Watson came on as an 81st-minute substitute for Jordi Gomez. His family were watching from the stands as the game quickly changed in Wigan’s favour. Within three minutes, Pablo Zabaleta took down Callum McManaman as he surged through. It was Zabaleta’s second booking and City were down to 10 men.
“That was the turning point,” says Watson. “I’d just got on the pitch and I remember thinking, ‘It’s now or never.’ An FA Cup final, 10 minutes to go, City down to 10 men – you’re thinking, ‘Right, you’re never going to get a better opportunity’.”
In the 90th minute, Wigan won a corner on the right. As Maloney shaped up to swing it into the penalty area, the stadium announcer informed the crowd there would be three minutes added on.
“I remember turning to Stuart Hayton, our club secretary, and both of us mouthed ‘Paul Scharner’ to each other,” says Jackson. “Paul had predicted we would get to the FA Cup final when we signed him in January. I looked at Stuart and, at that precise moment, we both thought Paul Scharner was going to score the winner.”
Not quite. Watson’s usual role at corners was to hang back towards the edge of the penalty area. Here, Wigan’s numerical advantage emboldened him to gamble. City had everyone back. And what happened next is another wonderfully emotive story given that the player in question had broken his leg in a game at Liverpool seven months earlier.
“Ben had no right to be in that final,” says Martinez. “The season looked over for him. But every time we got through to another round, you could see Ben working in the gym, trying to get ready.
“He had a bigger smile each time. ‘Maybe the sixth round,’ he was thinking, ‘maybe I can make the semi-finals.’ All of a sudden, he was fit again and (the weekend before the final) he was able to get some minutes in a match against West Brom. His story epitomises what the FA Cup is about.”
Watson, a former England under-21 international, had begun his career at Crystal Palace before moving to Wigan in 2009, for £2million. He was a fine passer of the ball, an intelligent footballer who fitted perfectly into Martinez’s style of play.
Shaun Maloney, now the Wigan manager, swung in the corner from the right. City had a zonal marking system that left them vulnerable to the diagonal, near-post run. And it still bemuses Watson, whose modesty sums up the unpretentious nature of the Wigan squad, that he sees his goal replayed so often on television montages showing the FA Cup’s greatest moments.
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“It was a brilliant cross,” he says. “I was unmarked and, having taken corners myself in the past, I always liked someone to run across the front post.
“After that, you just shut your eyes, jump and try to direct it towards the goal. And, luckily enough, it went in the top corner. It’s all a bit surreal, to be honest. A bit weird. In that moment, you’re part of history, forever.”
The saddest part for Wigan is that the story of their FA Cup-winning season did not have a happy ending.
Whelan had a habit of mentioning his broken leg and the 1960 final in every interview. It had become a running joke and, amid the celebrations at Wembley, Boyce mentioned to the chairman that he had, at last, a new story to tell.
“It’s closure,” Whelan replied. “It was the first time I had been back on that turf since I was carried off… it floods through your memories.”
That night, Whelan and his entourage celebrated at Scalini, his favourite Italian restaurant in the heart of Chelsea. The staff applauded them to their table.
But the players were on a bus back to Wigan and, in Martinez’s words, there was nothing stronger to drink on the 200-mile journey than “some of the Scottish players bringing Irn-Bru”.
Wigan did not have time to celebrate properly. They had training the following morning, preparing for a game at Arsenal two days later and trying to avoid falling into the division below.
“We had the FA Cup at the front of the bus,” says Martinez. “It felt really special, something you wanted to treasure and savour, but we were preparing for Arsenal. That was how quickly it turned. We never really had the time to pause and reflect, look back at what had just happened and share some emotions.”
To begin with, many of the players did not even receive a medal.
“I’d been on the pitch to celebrate and when I got back to the royal box somebody from the FA came over with a bag,” says Jackson. “It was literally a plastic bag. ‘It’s the players’ medals,’ she said. ‘We only managed to hand out 10 of them, there’s another 20 in here’.
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“I took them back to Wigan the next day and the train was so packed I ended up sitting on the floor. There were loads of supporters around me, on their way home. Nobody knew that the plastic bag between my legs was filled with the players’ medals.”
Unfortunately for Wigan, the FA’s showpiece match — traditionally held as the last match of the domestic season — was being staged earlier than usual because Wembley was being prepared for the Champions League final between Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund. And, within 24 hours of lifting the trophy, Martinez and his players were reminded how quickly the needle moves on football’s graph of exhilarating highs and excruciating lows.
Norwich City and Newcastle United both won to move clear of relegation danger. Sunderland, fourth from bottom, drew with Southampton and that meant Wigan, with two games remaining, had to get a shock result at Arsenal to have a chance of staying up. They lost 4-1 and this time the bus journey back up the motorway was spent in near-silence. They were down.
“The highest of the highs, then the lowest of the lows,” says Martinez. “It happened in a matter of days.”
Ten years on, Wigan have never returned to the Premier League and their relegation to League One is their fourth in a decade. They have gone back up to the Championship on the previous three occasions but the various yo-yoing feels reflective of their modern-day existence, especially since Whelan sold the club to Hong Kong-based investors five years ago.
The backdrop to Wigan’s latest relegation season is that there have been five different occasions when their players have not received their wages on time, culminating in the first-team squad refusing to train ahead of their final game against Rotherham.
Before that, there was the ordeal of the club being put into administration in 2020, as well as points deductions and various occasions when they have strayed dangerously close to being financially shipwrecked. Life is never dull for a ‘Tic’.
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City, meanwhile, are trying to win a treble of Champions League, Premier League and FA Cup. They have already won 14 trophies since 2013 and played 19 finals, semi-finals or Community Shields at Wembley. Yet a part of them must be heartily sick of Wigan: they also lost an FA Cup fifth-round tie at the DW stadium in 2018. Wigan were in League One and, again, the score was 1-0.
A statue of Whelan, holding the FA Cup close to his chest, is positioned outside the stadium that takes its name from his initials. He and Martinez have been added to a Hollywood-style Walk of Stars in Wigan’s town centre.
Three of City’s players have a statue outside the Etihad stadium (Yaya Toure might argue it should be four). City’s fans came to forgive Pellegrini, who eventually made way for Pep Guardiola, and Mancini is approaching his fifth anniversary as the manager of Italy. Maybe the two Robertos will do it all over again in the final of Euro 2024.
As for Watson, he retired from playing last year and, aged 37, understands that his contribution to a classic David-and-Goliath cup final will always be the moment for which he is remembered.
When, he asks, will a club of Wigan’s size win the FA Cup again? “It might happen,” he says, “but it isn’t going to be for a long time.”
(Top photo: Shaun Botterill/Getty Images)