Dan Burn exclusive “There’s no way that final meant as much to Liverpool players and fans as it did to us – winning the League Cup that day was like winning the World Cup” The Geordie defender reflects on Newcastle United’s cup final victory one year on

Dan Burn is an honest person on the pitch and off it. Speaking exclusively to FourFourTwo he admits that he watches his League Cup final goal back "every so often".

No surprise, and can you blame him?

“It’s still a bit of a blur,” he reflects. “It’s not until I see clips of the goal that it brings back memories – it was quite hard to keep your emotions intact. We did a much better job of that than the first time.”

'Crazy time'

He confirms that he has replayed the goal plenty of times on his phone. “I do watch the goal every so often, just to get that feeling again,” he says. “I don’t think I’ve ever felt like that, and I’ll probably never feel like that again. It was just a crazy time.”

Newcastle United had become famous for their trophy cabinet cobwebs, and getting to the League Cup final for the second time since the October 2021 takeover was an opportunity to banish the cup final monkey from their back and pave the way for a steadier flow of silverware than one every half-century.

The Magpies had been at Wembley for four finals since their last successful London trophy mission in 1955 and lost all of them convincingly. Defeating reigning Carabao Cup holders and soon-to-be Premier League Champions Liverpool in March 2025 was as big a physical hurdle as it was a psychological one for the entire club.

The win at Wembley was their first success over Liverpool in 18 attempts since 2015. Burn, who set his boyhood club on their way with a header from a Kieran Trippier corner just before half-time, had sensed this time it would be different.

“You looked over at the Liverpool end during the warm-up, and it was pretty much empty,” he remembers. “The Newcastle end was full about an hour and a half before kick-off – I was like, ‘F**king hell, this is crazy.’ I could feel myself getting a bit emotional, so I just took myself in and tried to concentrate on getting ready and prepared for the game. Then by the time it kicks off, you just get into game mode.”

The win took most generations of Newcastle United supporters into an uncharted dreamland. Since Newcastle’s last win at Wembley, they’d won one trophy – the Fairs Cup in 1969. Liverpool, by contrast, had won 62 pieces of silverware, including ten League Cups.

“There’s no way that final meant as much to their players and their fans as it did to us. That will, hopefully, be us one day, when we’re used to winning trophies, but at the moment it’s not. Winning the League Cup that day was like winning the World Cup. It felt like it was that much of a moment.”

With the cup hoodoo banished, Burn admits a different feeling has been in evidence around the club over the last 12 months. “You felt like there had always been a ceiling that no one could quite break through. Now we’ve broken through it, we don’t talk about how long it is since we’ve won a cup.

“Now in the League Cup, we just expect to get through to another final. There isn’t the weight on your shoulders, that monkey on your back that we’ve always spoken about. I feel like now we’ve done it, we’ve taken the chains off a bit, and we can go for it.”

Newcastle has proved Burn’s ceiling theory this season by getting to the League Cup semi-finals and FA Cup sixth round (losing to Manchester City in both) and making the knockout rounds of the Champions League, with a chance of progressing to the Last 16 very much a reality ahead of a huge second leg game this week where the boy from Blyth faces Barcelona.