Culture
Inside Newcastle United’s Carabao Cup glory – Shearer’s text, Howe’s banner and tactics, and a half-time slideshow
It is not news that Eddie Howe is meticulous. One step further is probably fair. Eddie Howe is the chief obsessive in a city filled with them.
Holding onto a 1-0 lead in the Carabao Cup final and 45 minutes away from breaking a 56-year trophy-less hoodoo, Howe did not turn to words alone for his half-time team talk. He had faith in his preparation.
He had faith in his slideshow.
As the players trooped in, moments after Dan Burn’s header had put them into the lead, Howe was waiting with information. His presentation contained the physical statistics from Newcastle’s past two months of matches — showing a marked dip at the start of the second half. He implored his players not to do the same at Wembley.
“We have been guilty of protecting leads in the past,” Burn told The Athletic post-match. “We just wanted to not take a backward step and really push forward.”
“Get after them,” Joelinton added. “Don’t change anything.”
They did all that and more. After 53 minutes, Newcastle burst forward down the left and Jacob Murphy’s knock-down fell to Alexander Isak. The Swedish striker had already had a goal ruled out for offside moments earlier. Not this time.
His shot found the corner of the Liverpool goal, and in holding on for a 2-1 win, Howe was catapulted onto Newcastle United’s Mount Rushmore. This is the inside story of the day and the game plan that got them there.
Two years ago, Newcastle smarted with regret after a 2-0 loss to Manchester United. That day was not their brand of football — they were meek, wan, and emotionally empty. Howe has later admitted that, post-match, he was not mentally in a healthy place.
But losing had significance. It brought lessons and resolve. The mantra emanating from Newcastle’s Benton training base was simple, but it resonated. This time, things would be done differently.
On Newcastle’s last trip to Wembley, the day felt long. The squad stayed opposite the stadium, the countdown to kick-off beginning the moment the curtains opened.
This year, Howe imparted the importance of staying elsewhere to the club’s logistical staff — opting for a Hertfordshire hotel, where they could have a gentle morning before travelling to the stadium in the early afternoon.
“This time, we tried to take away as many distractions as we could,” Howe said post-game. “We tried to make it very similar to a Premier League build-up. I think staying at a quieter hotel was really important.”
“Today, just driving into the stadium itself, it all felt so different,” another member of club staff remarked post-game. “It was focused — there wasn’t that emotion.”
Of course, it is impossible to completely escape a city’s feelings and expectations, especially when the club’s all-time leading scorer, Alan Shearer, texts the club captain, Bruno Guimaraes, on the eve of the game. His message was not one spewing emotion, but a clinical instruction: “Bring that trophy back.”
The banner Howe loves (Chris Brunskill/Fantasista/Getty Images)
That sentiment was echoed by the supporters, who re-displayed a flag from the Arsenal semi-final — “Get into them” — which Howe has privately acknowledged as his favourite banner, marking the core standard he wants his team to set.
But Howe being Howe, he did not send his team out with those words alone. Arne Slot’s Liverpool are a buzzsaw, marching unchallenged towards the Premier League table. Newcastle needed their own weapons.
Newcastle’s coaches identified early in their preparations that they felt Liverpool could be exploited from set pieces. Though their team shape was not finalised until after the West Ham United game on Monday night, their corner routines for the final have been practised for the past two weeks.
Newcastle’s staff feel Burn should score more from corners given his physical advantages and have emphasised the importance of delivering the ball into areas where he is likely to be first to the ball. By peeling off the back, away from the six-yard box, Burn could take advantage of Liverpool’s zonal defending. The header itself is made harder, further away from goal, but it places Burn up against Liverpool’s smaller blockers — in this case, Alexis Mac Allister — rather than centre-backs Virgil van Dijk and Ibrahima Konate.
Burn towers over Mac Allister to do what he hadn’t been doing in training: score (James Gill – Danehouse/Getty Images)
After 45 minutes, their plan came off — Burn powering past Mac Allister to bounce his header home. It was Newcastle’s first goal at Wembley in 25 years.
“If you’d seen us in practice, you’d have thought we had no chance,” Howe told Sky Sports afterwards. “Dan will be the first to admit he hasn’t practised like that, so when he scored, Jason (Tindall) and I turned to each other and couldn’t believe he scored.”
Slot put it even more bluntly — “I have never seen in my life a player from that far away heading a ball with that force into the far corner. Credit to him. Few players can score a goal from that distance with his head.”
Burn’s header that surprised Slot and Howe (Michelle Mercer/Newcastle United via Getty Images)
Newcastle had been deliberate in their preparations, with Howe admitting to hiding parts of their repertoire when they played Liverpool less than three weeks ago. This was a sacrifice — they looked passive in a 2-0 defeat — but even if they miss out on Champions League qualification by a point, it will pale against Wembley’s significance.
“We still wanted to win that game,” Howe insisted after Sunday’s win. “We just did it in a different way.”
In some ways, he was helped by necessity. Lewis Hall’s injury, suffered during that defeat, was viewed as a significant blow — it is a position where Newcastle are low on options after Lloyd Kelly’s departure to Juventus in January. But the great coaches are those who adapt when Plan A fails — and Howe found the positives in what he had.
Ordinarily, shuffling a right-back onto their weaker side to face Mohamed Salah, the world’s in-form right-winger, would be a major no-no. In Matt Targett, Howe had a specialist left-back, albeit one who had played barely any football in the past 18 months.
But Newcastle’s coaching staff felt positive about Tino Livramento, who is seen as a better one-on-one defender than Hall due to his pace. Additionally, they emphasised to Livramento that his right-footedness could become an advantage. If Salah cut inside, Livramento would be on his stronger right foot to make a challenge — while, with Burn instructed to double up inside, Livramento could force him wide without fear of being isolated and beaten.
Shifting Livramento also opened up his right-back berth, giving Howe and Tindall the luxury of selecting Kieran Trippier, who possesses the best set-piece delivery in the squad. With ordinary taker Anthony Gordon ruled out through suspension, Trippier had a chance to play regardless of Hall’s injury given the importance Newcastle placed on dead-ball opportunities. In the event, it was the 34-year-old’s cross that assisted Burn’s goal.
Howe’s other major selection question was on the left wing, deciding how to replace Gordon. While Joe Willock offers a huge work rate out of possession and a dangerous carrying ability, Howe decided relatively early in the week that Harvey Barnes was his preferred option.
The match against West Ham on Monday evening had been the winger’s first start in three months and Howe liked what he saw as Barnes assisted the game’s only goal. Fitness-permitting, Newcastle would be unchanged.
In attack, their plan hinged on pressuring Liverpool’s full-backs rather than their elite-level centre-backs. Isak often drifted left, with Barnes instead cutting inside. Makeshift right-back Jarell Quansah was left unsure which to pick up, a job made more difficult by deeper inside runs from Joelinton and Bruno Guimaraes, isolating the Liverpool defender.
This made space for Livramento to carry the ball upfield and though he was still on his weaker side, he had extra time to pick out the technically difficult left-footed cross. This created Newcastle’s second goal — Murphy outmuscling Liverpool’s other full-back, Andy Robertson, to nod down for Isak to score.
Just wait for that Isak celebration! 😍⚫️⚪️#EFL | #CarabaoCupFinal pic.twitter.com/PAEBtZ4QtH
— Carabao Cup (@Carabao_Cup) March 16, 2025
But though these were the frills Newcastle needed to score, it was not the core reason they were able to compete. That fell to Newcastle’s midfield trio — Sandro Tonali, Guimaraes, and Joelinton. To Liverpool, their collective of black and white shirts must have felt like prison bars.
Before kick-off, Tonali was the only player on either side to hand his warm-up jacket back to the kitman perfectly folded. It summed up a player who emerged from the day’s chaos with simple passes to get Newcastle moving forward.
Guimaraes devoted himself to winning midfield duels, often against two or three — by full-time, the only thing he had left to give were tears.
Tonali was at the heart of Newcastle’s performance (Serena Taylor/Newcastle United via Getty Images)
But Joelinton was the heart of Newcastle’s win — a player whose transformation, whose career, is now synonymous with Howe. He is the head coach’s greatest individual success.
Having suffered a knee injury in early February, missing the semi-final second-leg and the Liverpool game among others, it was not until the FA Cup defeat to Brighton two weeks ago that he proved his fitness.
Though always expected to be fit, there had been lingering concerns over what-ifs all the same. Newcastle’s staff felt their plan would only work if the midfielder was fully healthy. Howe aimed to exploit his midfield’s physical edge — being direct, physical, and aerially dominant was a requirement, not a possibility.
When Joelinton barrelled Quansah off the ball midway through the first half, screaming to the Newcastle fans as he did so, it epitomised Newcastle’s ambition. Football matches are decided by micro-wins adding up to big moments — these were Joelinton’s domain.
Guimaraes completed Shearer’s mission (Serena Taylor/Newcastle United via Getty Images)
One of these came just one minute into the second half, with Newcastle still a single goal up, and Diogo Jota at the byline and cutting the ball back. But Joelinton had listened to Howe’s slideshow — if he can come back from how his Newcastle career began, he can come back 40 yards in a cup final to block Salah’s goalbound shot.
This was Salah’s only real moment of danger. With Trent Alexander-Arnold out, Liverpool’s main way to build up play — short of hopeful long balls — was beating Newcastle’s initial press and playing through the midfield. They never came close to doing it; Dominik Szoboszlai was marked to the point of extinction by Joelinton, while Howe held his wingers tight to ensure Guimaraes and Tonali had simple reads to spring and win their duels. Salah was reduced to chasing hopeful punts.
By the time Liverpool’s final heave landed, Joelinton was on his knees, pointing to the sky. Guimaraes wept uncontrollably.
In the royal box, Newcastle owner and PIF chairman Yasir Al-Rumayyan pounded his phone for 30 minutes after the game, leaving voice notes and sending messages. Newcastle are awaiting Saudi Arabian sign-off for upgrades to both their training base and stadium; shiny metal silverware does help things get done.
If decisions are still to be taken over Newcastle’s long-term future, the short-term was set. The players streamed towards Wembley’s Box Park. Those not on international duty will fly to Dubai on Monday for a warm-weather training camp. Remember, Howe is meticulous.
But as the final whistle blew and Newcastle’s players streamed onto the pitch, Howe stared, wide-eyed, and spun before falling into Tindall’s arms. For the first time on Sunday, he and Newcastle did not know what to do.
(Top photo: Stu Forster/Getty Images)
In the midst of the world’s unrelenting horribleness, it’s important to make room for beauty. True! But also something of a truism, an idea that comes to hand a little too easily to be trusted. The proclamation that art matters — that, in difficult times, it helps — can sound like a shopworn self-care mantra.
So instead of musing on generalities, maybe we should focus our attention on a particular aesthetic experience. Instead of declaring the importance of art, we could look at a painting. Or we could read a poem.
A poem, as it happens, about looking at a painting.
Hayden did not take the act of seeing for granted. His eyesight was so poor that he described himself as “purblind”; as a child he was teased for his thick-framed glasses. Monet’s Giverny paintings, whose blurriness is sometimes ascribed to the painter’s cataracts, may have revealed to the poet not so much a new way of looking as one that he already knew.
Read in isolation, this short poem might seem to celebrate — and to exemplify — an art divorced from politics. Monet’s depiction of his garden, like the garden itself, offers a refuge from the world.
But “Selma” and “Saigon” don’t just represent headlines to be pushed aside on the way to the museum. They point toward the turmoil that preoccupied the poetry of Hayden and many of his contemporaries.
“Monet’s ‘Waterlilies’” was published in a 1970 collection called “Words in the Mourning Time.” The title poem is an anguished response to the assassinations of Robert F. Kennedy and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and to the deepening quagmire in Vietnam. Another poem in the volume is a long elegy for Malcolm X. Throughout his career (he died in 1980, at 66), Hayden returned frequently to the struggles and tragedies of Black Americans, including his own family.
Born in Detroit in 1913, Hayden, the first Black American to hold the office now known as poet laureate of the United States, was part of a generation of poets — Gwendolyn Brooks, Dudley Randall, Margaret Danner and others — who came of age between the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and the Black Arts movement of the ’60s.
A poet of modernist sensibilities and moderate temperament, he didn’t adopt the revolutionary rhetoric of the times, and was criticized by some of his more radical peers for the quietness of his voice and the formality of his diction.
But his contemplative style makes room for passion.
Ever since the mad scientist Frankenstein cried, “It’s alive!” in the 1931 classic film directed by James Whale, pop culture has never been the same.
Few works of fiction have inspired more adaptations, re-imaginings, parodies and riffs than Mary Shelley’s tragic 1818 Gothic novel, “Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus,” the tale of Victor Frankenstein, who, in his crazed quest to create life, builds a grotesque creature that he rejects immediately.
The story was first borrowed for the screen in 1910 — in a single-reel silent — and has directly or indirectly spawned hundreds of movies and TV shows in many genres. Each one, including Guillermo del Toro’s new “Frankenstein,” streaming on Netflix, comes with the same unspoken agreement: that we collectively share a core understanding of the legend.
Here’s a look at the many ways the central themes that Shelley explored, as she provocatively plumbed the human condition, have been examined and repurposed time and again onscreen.
“I will pioneer a new way, explore unknown powers, and unfold to the world the deepest mysteries of creation.”— Victor Frankenstein, Chapter 3
The Mad-Scientist Creator
Shelley was profuse in her descriptions of the scientist’s relentless mind-set as he pursued his creation, his fixation on generating life blinding him to all the ramifications.
Sound familiar? Perhaps no single line in cinema has distilled this point better than in the 1993 blockbuster “Jurassic Park,” when Dr. Ian Malcolm tells John Hammond, the eccentric C.E.O. with a God complex, “Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn’t stop to think if they should.”
Among the beloved interpretations that offer a maniacal, morally muddled scientist is “The Curse of Frankenstein” (1957), the first in the Hammer series.
“Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein” (1994), directed by Kenneth Branagh, is generally considered the most straightforward adaptation of the book.
More inventive variations include the flamboyant Dr. Frank-N-Furter, who creates a “perfect man” in the 1975 camp favorite “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.”
In Alex Garland’s 2015 thriller, “Ex Machina,” a reclusive, self-obsessed C.E.O. builds a bevy of female-like humanoids.
And in the 1985 horror comedy “Re-Animator,” a medical student develops a substance that revives dead tissue.
Then there are the 1971 Italian gothic “Lady Frankenstein” and the 2023 thriller “Birth/Rebirth,” in which the madman is in fact a madwoman.
“With an anxiety that almost amounted to agony, I collected the instruments of life around me, that I might infuse a spark of being into the lifeless thing that lay at my feet.”— Victor Frankenstein, Chapter 5
The Moment of Reanimation
Shelley is surprisingly vague about how her scientist actually accomplishes his task, leaving remarkable room for interpretation. In a conversation with The New York Times, del Toro explained that he had embraced this ambiguity as an opportunity for imagination, saying, “I wanted to detail every anatomical step I could in how he put the creature together.”
Filmmakers have reimagined reanimation again and again. See Mel Brooks’s affectionate 1974 spoof, “Young Frankenstein,” which stages that groundbreaking scene from Whale’s first movie in greater detail.
Other memorable Frankensteinian resurrections include the 1987 sci-fi action movie “RoboCop,” when a murdered police officer is rebooted as a computerized cyborg law enforcer.
In the 2012 Tim Burton animated “Frankenweenie,” a young scientist revives his beloved dog by harnessing lighting.
And in the 2019 psychologically bleak thriller “Depraved,” an Army surgeon, grappling with trauma, pieces together a bundle of body parts known as Adam.
“Accursed creator! Why did you form a monster so hideous that even you turned from me in disgust?”— The creature, Chapter 15
The Wretched Creature
In Shelley’s telling, the creature has yellow skin, flowing black hair, white teeth and watery eyes, and speaks eloquently, but is otherwise unimaginably repulsive, allowing us to fill in the blanks. Del Toro envisions an articulate, otherworldly being with no stitches, almost like a stone sculpture.
It was Whale’s 1931 “Frankenstein” — based on a 1927 play by Peggy Webling — and his 1935 “Bride of Frankenstein” that have perhaps shaped the story’s legacy more than the novel. Only loosely tethered to the original text, these films introduced the imagery that continues to prevail: a lumbering monster with a block head and neck bolts, talking like a caveman.
In Tim Burton’s 1990 modern fairy tale “Edward Scissorhands,” a tender humanoid remains unfinished when its creator dies, leaving it with scissor-bladed prototypes for hands.
In David Cronenberg’s 1986 body horror, “The Fly,” a scientist deteriorates slowly into a grotesque insectlike monster after his experiment goes wrong.
In the 1973 blaxploitation “Blackenstein,” a Vietnam veteran who lost his limbs gets new ones surgically attached in a procedure that is sabotaged.
Conversely, in some films, the mad scientist’s experiment results in a thing of beauty: as in “Ex Machina” and Pedro Almodóvar’s 2011 thriller, “The Skin I Live In,” in which an obsessive plastic surgeon keeps a beautiful woman imprisoned in his home.
And in Yorgos Lanthimos’s 2023 sci-fi dramedy, “Poor Things,” a Victorian-era woman is brought back to life after her brain is swapped with that of a fetus.
“I am an unfortunate and deserted creature; I look around, and I have no relation or friend upon earth.”— The creature, Chapter 15
The All-Consuming Isolation
The creature in “Frankenstein” has become practically synonymous with the concept of isolation: a beast so tortured by its own existence, so ghastly it repels any chance of connection, that it’s hopelessly adrift and alone.
What’s easily forgotten in Shelley’s tale is that Victor is also destroyed by profound isolation, though his is a prison of his own making. Unlike most takes on the story, there is no Igor-like sidekick present for the monster’s creation. Victor works in seclusion and protects his horrible secret, making him complicit in the demise of everyone he loves.
The theme of the creator or the creation wallowing in isolation, physically and emotionally, is present across adaptations. In Steven Spielberg’s 2001 adventure, “A.I. Artificial Intelligence,” a family adopts, then abandons a sentient humanoid robot boy programmed to love.
In the 2003 psychological horror “May,” a lonely woman with a lazy eye who was ostracized growing up resolves to make her own friend, literally.
And in the 1995 Japanese animated cyberpunk “Ghost in the Shell,” a first-of-its-kind cyborg with a human soul struggles with its place amid humanity.
“Shall each man find a wife for his bosom, and each beast have his mate, and I be alone?”— The creature, Chapter 20
The Desperate Need for Companionship
In concert with themes of isolation, the creators and creations contend with the idea of companionship in most “Frankenstein”-related tales — whether romantic, familial or societal.
In the novel, Victor’s family and his love interest, Elizabeth, are desperate for him to return from his experiments and rejoin their lives. When the creature demands a romantic partner and Victor reneges, the creature escalates a vengeful rampage.
That subplot is the basis for Whale’s “The Bride of Frankenstein,” which does offer a partner, though there is no happily ever after for either.
Sometimes the monster finds love with a human, as in “Edward Scissorhands” or the 2024 horror romance “Lisa Frankenstein,” in which a woman falls for a reanimated 19th-century corpse.
In plenty of other adaptations, the mission is to restore a companion who once was. In the 1990 black comedy “Frankenhooker,” a science whiz uses the body parts of streetwalkers to bring back his fiancée, also Elizabeth, after she is chewed up by a lawn mower.
In John Hughes’s 1985 comedy, “Weird Science,” a couple of nerdy teenage boys watch Whale’s 1931 classic and decide to create a beautiful woman to elevate their social standing.
While the plot can skew sexual — as with “The Rocky Horror Picture Show,” “Ex Machina” and “Frankenhooker” — it can also skew poignant. In the 1991 sci-fi action blockbuster “Terminator 2: Judgment Day,” a fatherlike bond forms between a troubled teenage boy and the cyborg sent to protect him.
Or the creature may be part of a wholesome, albeit freakish, family, most famously in the hit 1960s shows “The Addams Family,” with Lurch as the family’s block-headed butler, and “The Munsters,” with Herman Munster as a nearly identical replica of Whale’s creature.
In Shelley’s novel, the creature devotes itself to secretly observing the blind man and his family as they bond over music and stories. While sitcom families like the Munsters and the Addamses may seem silly by comparison, it’s a life that Shelley’s creature could only have dreamed of — and in fact did.
“Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West,” Gregory Maguire’s 1995 novel, has been adapted into a stage musical that was itself made into a two-part feature film. In all versions, what is the name of the witch Elphaba’s younger sister, whom she accompanies to Shiz University?
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