Wembley - Saturday 19th May

Chelsea 1 Manchester United 0 (After Extra Time)

MATCH REPORT

By Roy Collins at Wembley Stadium (Courtesy of the Electronic Telegraph)

Chelsea (0) 1 Man Utd (0) 0
after extra-time

No dream final, just a dream finish, at least for the followers of Chelsea, who took 116 minutes to produce the one coherent piece of football that turned out to be all that was needed to deliver the 126th FA Cup on the day the old trophy finally returned to its spiritual Wembley home.

	Match winner: Didier Drogba scores the only goal at Wembley

After all the problems and spiralling costs of the new stadium, the only glitch on the day was the failure of the Red Arrows to deliver the promised fly-past just before kick-off. And though it would be cruel to say that the Red Devils also failed to turn up, the occasion fell way short of the all-action, hard-hat final that we had anticipated.

Chelsea's players, their Premiership and Champions League misery temporarily forgotten, performed synchronised sliding dives on the lush grass in front of their supporters at the end, continuing long after the disappointed hordes of United followers had disappeared into the sunlit evening. But the modern game conducts its business at such a grinding, unmerciful pace that by the time Chelsea's team dragged themselves to the dressing rooms, manager Jose Mourinho and his directors were already shaping plans for next season.

The arrogant Mourinho, who made history himself by becoming the first manager to lead out a Cup final team with his hands in his pockets, must also have set a managerial record for the amount of time he hung on to the trophy afterwards, which completed a full set of English domestic honours. One would not have been surprised if he had suddenly produced his missing pooch from inside the lid.

These occasions are meant to provide historical perspectives and if United fell short of a record fourth League and Cup double, Chelsea's Cup came wrapped in an extra ribbon, only the second team after Arsenal in 1993 to win both domestic cups. That was also the last year the Cup final was decided by an extra-time goal.

Arsenal's winner by Andy Linighan was the latest final goal, at 119 minutes and 16 seconds. Drogba's arrived four minutes from time and though there seemed no initial danger when he collected a through ball from John Obi Mikel, he swiftly knocked it right to Frank Lampard, whose cushioned volley set up a virtual tap-in.

If anyone was going to win it in normal time, it looked like being Ryan Giggs, another man pushing at history's door in attempting to become the first player since Blackburn's Jimmy Forrest in 1891 to win a fifth winners' medal.

He then thought he had done it as the first period of extra-time came to a close when his shot from Wayne Rooney's cross was carried over the line by Chelsea goalkeeper Petr Cech. But referee Steve Bennett gave neither a goal nor a foul.

Back in 1923, when Wembley staged its first FA Cup final, it needed just a single white horse to control the crowds. This grand re-opening required a massive security operation and a flying exclusion zone over north London, which the Red Arrows perhaps believed included them.

The new Wembley was so long in the rebuilding that we were bombarded with a plethora of statistics about the number of toilets and restaurants and the number of beers that can be poured (and downed) every minute.

We were hoping these facts would end up buried under an avalanche of exciting match statistics, glorious goals, imaginative build-up play and individual brilliance. It was not to be. Part of the blame lay with a pitch reminiscent of the stodgy surfaces at the old stadium, which prompted Giggs' surprising pre-match claim that he never much enjoyed playing there. We needed a downpour to freshen up the grass but the day stayed dry, much like the teams' powder until long into extra-time.

Mourinho may be incapable of admitting his faults but one of his finer qualities is a decisiveness in correcting his selection errors. True to that nature, he courageously replaced Joe Cole with Arjen Robben at half-time to give his side a more cutting edge.

Even then, Giggs continued to be the man most likely to provide the decisive moment, a great clunking fist of a tackle by Michael Essien denying him when clean through. Predictably, the pass again came from the elegant foot of Paul Scholes. The man whose career was under threat from a mysterious eye injury last season also showed that he still has 20-20 vision on a football pitch.

Strange as it may seem, the season ended in disappointment for both clubs, given their vaulting ambitions. United, who had dreamed of a repeat of their 1999 treble, had to make do with a single shot of Premiership triumph, while Chelsea, chasing an unprecedented quadruple deep into spring, had to settle for a double.

But to Chelsea and their fans, it still seemed that their cups were overflowing last night.

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