Football Phrase of the Week: End a Trophy Drought (Carabao Cup Final 2025)

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Football Phrase of the Week: End a Trophy Drought

In this football phrase of the week we look back at the Carabao Cup final between Newcastle and Liverpool in which Newcastle ended their trophy drought when they defeated Liverpool 2-1. You can read the transcript for this post below, while you can also check out our glossary of footballing phrases here and visit our site to access all our previous posts and podcasts. If you have any suggestions or questions then you can contact us at admin@languagecaster.com.

DF: Hello everyone. This is Damian from the Languagecaster team and I hope you are all doing well. Welcome to this week’s football phrase, which is when we look back at an expression from the weekend’s football and today we explain, ‘to end a trophy drought‘ after Newcastle’s win over Liverpool in the 2025 Carabao Cup final.

So, Newcastle United have finally won some silverware after they defeated Liverpool 2-1 in the Carabao Cup final on Sunday. Newcastle fully deserved their win as they outplayed a rather tired-looking Liverpool side. This was the first time that Newcastle have won a trophy since 1971 when they won the European Fairs Cup (now called the Europa League); while the last time they won a trophy in England was the 1955 FA Cup. This means that they had not won a domestic trophy in 70 years. When a team goes a long time without winning anything we can say that they are experiencing a drought, so for Newcastle the 70-year trophy drought is now over – they have finally ended their trophy drought.

We can also hear the word drought in football to describe other long periods of time without successfully doing anything. So, for example a forward or even a team who has failed to score a goal in a long time is suffering from a goal drought. We have explained this term before when describing a striker who cannot score over a period of games. This weekend in a Premier League match Manchester United’s Rasmus Hojlund scored his first goal in 21 matches to finally end his goal drought.

So, Newcastle secure  (or win) their first domestic trophy in 70 years which included nine defeats in a row at Wembley. I wonder will this inspire my team Tottenham to end their trophy drought – we have not won since 2008 so only a 17 year drought. Still time!

• Example: Eddie Howe ‘will never forget’ day Newcastle broke trophy drought (Guardian.co.uk, March 17 2025)

Stinger: You are listening to Languagecaster (from a Brazilian fan)

Yes, that message was in Portuguese from a Brazilian fan. Enjoy all the football this week and we’ll see you again later on in the week in our regular weekly language podcast when we’ll be looking ahead to the weekend’s fixtures including the World Cup qualifiers. And of course we’ll be explaining more football language. Bye bye.

Football Language Glossary