As the full time whistle blew for the Carabao Cup final this past weekend, I burst into tears. I had spent most of my life expecting to die without seeing Newcastle United lift a trophy. I still suspected I might. I had just about composed myself by the time we were lifting the cup - then current captain Bruno Guimaraes and former captain Kieran Trippier called former former team captain and still current (but long-time sidelined by injury) club captain Jamaal Lascelles over, and the waterworks started again. But of course, I had seen all this before - just not like this.
As my gaming tastes have developed with age and deepened with a proximity to the games industry, one thing has remained constant. Every year I buy FIFA, even if its name has not enjoyed this consistency with the series now known as EA FC. Every year I play, every year I do Career Mode as Newcastle United, and every year I win a trophy. Every year I know it's the only trophy I'll see us lift. Except not this year.
Digital Dreams Become Reality
70 years since our last domestic trophy, 56 years since our last trophy of any kind, the clock has been reset to mere hours. As I watched Bruno, Trips, and Lascelles lift the three handled cup aloft, it seemed like it had been made for them. Waiting for them. I thought about all the players and captains we'd had down the years who deserved to win something with us. Alan Shearer. Rob Lee. Warren Barton. Shay Given. Aaron Hughes. Nolberto Solano. Steven Taylor. Fabricio Coloccini. Jonas Gutierrez. Allan Saint-Maximin. And then I thought about all of the times I had seen them win.
Not in the real world, but then I never thought I'd ever see us win in the real world. Each year I settled for watching them lift aloft virtual trophies, League Cups and FA Cups, but also Premier Leagues and Champions Leagues, with players real and imagined jumping over each other in celebration. Titus Bramble alongside Thierry Henry. Jonjo Shelvey with Luka Modric. Leon Best next to Paolo Maldini. It all felt like a power fantasy on the same level as saving the galaxy in Mass Effect. The same kind of impossible dream.
Last year, I was in the crowd at Ubisoft Forward at Summer Game Fest. It was the first time we'd seen gameplay for Assassin's Creed Shadows, and it looked thoroughly okay. The presentation opened with Yasuke approaching a dog, and the in-person crowd let out an ear-splitting roar when he petted it, in big 2024. The mood in the amphitheatre was ecstatic, but the reaction amongst pretty much everyone else watching along at home was ‘meh'.
As we left, one of my colleagues turned to me and said “Assassin's Creed fans are like those people who support a sports team that never wins anything. I just don't get why they care so much.” I turned to him and said “I do.”
He's From Blyth
In the run up to the Final, I started thinking about who I wanted to see score. Bruno Guimaraes, our captain, who understood the club's passion more than any other player, foreign or local? Sandro Tonali, our midfield maestro, a debt of gratitude repaid tenfold after his long ban-enforced absence? Harvey Barnes, deputising for the suspended Anthony Gordon with a point to prove? Joelinton, dotting the is and crossing the ts on a redemption arc that has long since been complete?
I hadn't even gone into the game wanting us to win. That seemed too greedy, too out of reach. To win against a team we haven't beat in a decade, to achieve something we hadn't done in my lifetime? I would have settled for turning up. We were here two years ago, high on the emotions of the day, and didn't look like we belonged there yet. All I wanted this time was to feel like we belonged.
But I still wanted that goal. In the end I settled on Dan Burn, the Geordie of our starting XI. He was never going to score, but then, we were never going to win. We don't do quiet? We don't do beating Liverpool. We don't do trophies. But then suddenly, we did. He did. He was born in Blyth, but he was made at Wembley.
I have watched Newcastle United lift dozens of trophies down the years in FIFA and EA FC, and always believed it was the closest I would get to the real thing. As a child, it excited me - seeing my heroes (or digital versions with a passing resemblance if you squinted) raise the cup aloft. As an adult, it became bittersweet. A synthetic substitute with a foul aftertaste, a reminder of what I could never have. Now I have tasted the real thing, and it's so much better than I ever could have imagined.
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