Liverpool face Newcastle in the Carabao Cup final on Sunday, March 16.
Newcastle dumped out Arsenal in the semifinals and 2023’s beaten finalists will once again try to win their first domestic trophy since the 1955 FA Cup.
Liverpool are on course for Premier League title glory in Arne Slot’s first season in charge but will be keen to get a trophy on the board after Paris Saint-Germain ended their UEFA Champions League hopes in midweek.
But aside from the trophy itself, winning the Carabao Cup can be important to a team’s ambitions the following season.
Do Carabao Cup winners qualify for Europa League?
The winners of the Carabao Cup in 2025 will not qualify automatically for the Europa League. Instead, as with the 2023/24 tournament, the winners will earn a place in the playoff round of the UEFA Conference League.
However, this can be overridden depending whether that team’s finishing place in the Premier League, or success in another tournament, pushes them into a superior continental competition.
If the Carabao Cup winners also finish in the top four (most likely top five this season, depending on UEFA coefficient rankings) of the Premier League — something that has been the case in every season since Manchester United’s win over Southampton in 2017 — they will automatically qualify for the UEFA Champions League. If the Carabao Cup winner comes in fifth place or wins the FA Cup, they are automatically entered into the Europa League group stage.
In the above cases, the Conference League playoff place awarded to the Carabao Cup winner will then be passed on to the highest-placed team in the Premier League not already qualified for the Champions League or Europa League (sixth or seventh place).
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What do Carabao Cup runners-up qualify for?
The Carabao Cup runners-up do not qualify for any UEFA competitions by virtue of only reaching the final, even if the tournament winners end up qualifying for a better European competition by the other means described above.
What is the Carabao Cup prize money?
The Carabao Cup winners in 2025 will be awarded £100,000 (approximately $125,000), with the runners-up pocketing £50,000 (approx. $62,600).
This amounts to small change when compared to the sums on offer for Premier League finishing spots and it is also considerably less than teams can win in the FA Cup.
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Lowest-ranked teams to win the League Cup
During the competition’s maiden decade in the 1960s, there were two instances of clubs from the third tier beating top division clubs in the final. In 1967, Queens Park Rangers came from 2-0 down to beat holders West Brom 3-2, while two years later Swindon Town stunned Arsenal on a bog of a Wembley pitch 3-1.
There has been nothing to match those heroics in the modern day, although League Two Bradford City completed an astonishing run to the 2013 final despite operating in the fourth tier of English football. The Bantams were beaten 4-0 in the final by Swansea City, then in the Premier League.
The advent of squad rotation in the 1990s — Alex Ferguson’s decision to field a youthful Manchester United side that was dispatched by York City famously prompted questions in Parliament — opened up opportunities for sides not always synonymous with winning major honours.
Leicester City were winners in 1997 and 2000, beating lower-league opposition in the form of Tranmere Rovers in the latter final, while the Foxes were beaten finalists in 1999. Middlesbrough lost the 1997 and 1998 finals before Gareth Southgate (below) captained them to glory in 2004 with a 2-1 win over Bolton Wanderers.
Boro then embarked upon a run to the last 16 of the UEFA Cup in 2004/05, reaching the final the following season. Other unheralded League Cup winners have not made the same impression in Europe.
Birmingham City stunned Arsenal in the 2011 League Cup final but did not get out of the Europa League group stage the following season, albeit having been relegated from the Premier League in the meantime. Swansea fared slightly better in 2013/14, emerging from their group before losing to Napoli in the first knockout round.
If squad rotation opened the door to surprise winners at one point, the ever-increasing wealth and squad depth of the Premier League’s heavyweights has since all but closed it. In the 11 years since Swansea beat Bradford, the cup has gone to members of the ‘big six’, with Manchester City winning six times during this period, Chelsea and Manchester United winning two each, and Liverpool claiming one.
