Eddie Howe It will be back Wembley He is firmly in his thoughts on Sunday with his late mother.
The 45-year-old may be just 90 minutes away from the success of even Geordie folk heroes. Kevin Keegan and sir bobby robson It failed, bringing back the first major trophy for Newcastle since the 1969 Intercity Fairs Cup.
However, he will turn his mind to his mother’s day as he makes his way onto the sacred turf at headquarters ahead of the Carabao Cup final match with Manchester United. Mom took him there as a child.
Howe said: “He took me on a tour of Wembley at the age of five, six, lifted the fake FA Cup, came out with a fake crowd noise. He was there doing that with me.
“My football opportunity is totally dependent on him, really, so I will definitely be thinking a lot about him and the role he plays in my life this week.
“But when I was a kid, I never forgot those memories, that day. Wembley was a great place for me, a place I’ve been dying to get back to in some way in football.”
Howe’s mother, who died after a brief illness in 2012, was a single parent raising her children while working multiple jobs to support her family – the Newcastle boss will have three brothers and sisters among the crowd on Sunday.
He had a huge impact on me and now I really do everything because of him.
Newcastle manager Eddie Howe
His work ethic and dedication are traits he inherited, and he insists that most of the praise belongs to the adult he’s become.
He said: “I’d say 99.9 percent totally depends on him because he was my driving force as a kid. He had a huge impact on me and now I really do everything because of him.
Howe’s reputation has improved considerably since accepting Newcastle’s job offer in November 2021.
The club’s Saudi-backed owners turned to his former Bournemouth boss after then Villarreal manager Unai Emery turned down their offer, and the coaching file he compiled during his absence from the game has been put to extraordinary good use ever since.
However, knocking out a fifth-placed team in the Premier League for a grand final seemed like a distant prospect the day Howe was forced to retire as a 29-year-old after five years of struggling to return. He suffered a serious knee injury during his time at Portsmouth.
In the depths of his despair, Bournemouth asked him to head the club’s center of excellence, and to his surprise, he was instantly hooked, leading the Cherries who later rose from the Second Division to the top flight.
He said: “I made a coaching mistake, and it was a coaching mistake that I never thought I would catch because I felt I was a little too shy to do it.
“At the time, I was passionately trying to seek out every resource I could find to try to understand coaching more because playing and coaching, as I’ve said many times, are completely different skills.
“Even though you think you know what you’re talking about as a player, the truth is you end up playing and you realize you don’t know anything, so I was starting from scratch and then trying to drown myself in knowledge.”
The victory at Wembley would represent an important turning point in Howe’s career, but it would be secondary to a man who quickly settled in a city desperate for success.
“I hope over time my work will prove that I am good enough or not good enough, but I think there is a bigger picture here. This is for Newcastle.”