Carabao Cup should be canceled to ease fixture congestion

The FA should cancel next season’s League Cup competition in order to aid fixture congestion caused by the COVID-19 delay on the 2019-20 season.

There aren’t many competitions in football as useless as the League Cup, which is also called the Carabao Cup for sponsorship reasons in England. The competition is yet another domestic cup on the English football calendar, alongside the far more significant and historic FA Cup.

So what even is the point of the League Cup? Well, there isn’t a clearly defined answer to that, and other big nations apart from France don’t have their own version of it. This has led to many deeming it surplus to requirements over the years.

During these trying times, that rings especially true. With the 2019-20 Premier League season being delayed into the summer due to COVID-19, it’s likely that the 2020-21 season will have to complete its schedule in a shorter amount of time than usual.

This means that unnecessary fixtures and competitions must be kept to a minimum, and there’s no greater target for that than the Carabao Cup, which borders on irrelevance every single year. Many clubs simply use it as a way to brood youngsters into the first-team, and while this is a great way to do that, it’s not worth the extra fixtures during a condensed season.

Next season, the FA must find a way to cancel the Carabao Cup. That decision could be made permanent and nothing would really feel any different in the English football calendar, but just for starters, they should do it next season to help teams with fixture congestion.

This would lessen the number of injuries related to fatigue for each and every club involved, and it would give the Premier League a bit more breathing room in terms of fixture scheduling.

This year’s Carabao Cup was won by Manchester City, which is a regular occurrence, as they beat Aston Villa 2-1 at Wembley in early March. Phil Foden was awarded man of the match – highlighting the competition’s platform for allowing young players to shine.

Going a season without it, however, would not make a big difference to football, and the FA needs to make this cancelation happen if they are to have as seamless a 2020-21 season as possible.