Chelsea vs Tottenham - Capital One Cup final match report: Captain John Terry inspires Blues triumph at Wembley Stadium

Chelsea 2 Tottenham 0

John Terry puts Chelsea ahead (GETTY IMAGES)

It is not every day that Jose Mourinho launches himself onto the turf in front of his celebrating players for the benefit of the cameras, but then we might just have underestimated what the plain old League Cup meant to a man who already had 16 major trophies in world football at the start of the day.

In the rain at Wembley, Mourinho delighted in the triumph in a way that you might not expect of a man who has won two Champions League titles as well as league championships in four major European football countries. Afterwards he said that he had looked forward to this final as he had his very first as a manager at Porto 12 years ago. “I need to feed myself with titles,” he said, like a man unburdening himself to his therapist.

What really seemed to delight him was what Mourinho called the “strategic” element of his victory, namely his decision to replace the suspended Nemanja Matic by moving his centre-back Kurt Zouma into one of the two holding midfield roles. It would be right to say that it worked, to the extent that Mourinho compared the young Frenchman to Marcel Desailly, and that it worked so well seems to prove fundamental to the Chelsea manager.

“We were a strategic team, a team that came to win,” Mourinho said. “A team that was comfortable, a team that found a solution to keep the stability after the ‘criminal’ tackle that Matic did that got him suspended. We found that.”

It was a performance built on the leadership of John Terry, the one unchanging figure in the centre of the Chelsea defence, who scored the first goal and lunged in to block a shot from Harry Kane on 87 minutes. Terry had kept the young striker quiet for much of the game and that was integral to stopping Tottenham – and so it was that the Chelsea captain lifted the 12th major trophy of the Roman Abramovich era.

You could not help but notice that as Terry prepared to descend the Wembley steps with the trophy he felt a hand on his arm for one last congratulatory message and looked up to see the England manager, Roy Hodgson.

For all his pre-match rosary-bead kissing and po-faced touchline demeanour, Mourinho will have contested few cup finals when his plan was executed quite so smoothly and quite so clinically. When Diego Costa scored the second on 56 minutes, Spurs started to buckle and, among other things, that long trip to Italy in the Europa League for Thursday’s game against Fiorentina was taking its toll.

Mourinho began his press conference with a long unsolicited tribute to Mauricio Pochettino and when it was the Spurs manager turn to come in he seemed, at the very least, to be coming to terms with the defeat. He said that he had expected all along that either Gary Cahill, as per the pre-match rumours, or Zouma would play midfield, although it turned out there was little his team could do about stopping Chelsea.

Diego Costa celebrates making it 2-0 to Chelsea (Getty Images)

For periods in the first half it looked like Spurs were going to take this game by the lapels, and they hit the bar through Christian Eriksen. But the truth of it for this young side was that the margin of defeat felt just about right. By the end they had thrown their best punches and landed none.

Pochettino pointed out that his team had an average age of just 23 and a half and tomorrow, his 43 birthday, he will be back out on the training pitch with them. Their problem in this cup final was that they never punished Chelsea. Unless you can score goals against them and, as Spurs showed on New Year’s Day, keep scoring goals, then they often find a way back.

Tottenham players react after the match (GETTY IMAGES)

In the first half, Kyle Walker and Andros Townsend were a threat down the right side of Chelsea’s defence. Kane tricked his way past three Chelsea players in that meticulous, slow-motion style of his, eventually winning the free-kick from which Eriksen hit the bar. But for all Spurs’ good work, that was all Petr Cech had to worry about.

Costa was his usual truculent self. He thrust a hand into the face of Nabil Bentaleb in the first half and he squared up to more white shirts than bears recounting. Eric Dier was unfortunate to pick up a booking for a pretty harmless challenge on Costa just after the half hour, although a more serious trip on the Chelsea man did follow and that went unpunished.

It all got too much for Mourinho at the end (GETTY)

The goal arrived in the last minute of the first 45 when Nacer Chadli, anonymous for most of the game, made a mess of clearing a cross-field pass and fouled Branislav Ivanovic, overlapping behind him. The free-kick was Spurs’ downfall. Danny Rose got something on the ball when he would have been better off leaving it to Bentaleb behind him to clear. The deflected ball struck Dier and fell to Terry whose shot past Lloris clipped Dier on its way in.

In the second half, Chelsea took control. Kane was very effectively corralled by Terry and Cahill and in front of them, Zouma settled nicely into his role. The second goal from Costa came from a move that worked the ball from right to left quickly: Willian to Fabregas and onto Costa. He made the space for a left foot shot and the second major deflection of the day came off Walker and took the ball past Lloris.

By the end it felt a bit like a procession. Mourinho played up to the Chelsea support, while at the other end of Wembley the Spurs crowd trickled away. This was Mourinho’s sixth major trophy in English football – although he would add the 2005 Community Shield to that too – and his third League Cup. On days like these he does, it has to be said, make it look easy.

“I had two seasons without a trophy, and it looked like I was 20 years without a trophy. Even [for] myself,” Mourinho said afterwards. “This is a good problem, to have that feeling that two years is a long time. That's a good feeling.” This was trophy No 17 for the Chelsea manager and the mood was very much that there will be no relenting in the pursuit of No 18.

Chelsea (4-2-3-1): Cech; Ivanovic, Cahill, Terry, Azpilicueta; Ramires, Zouma; Willian (Cuadrado, 76), Fabregas (Oscar, 88), Hazard; Costa (Drogba, 90).

Substitutes not used: Courtois (gk), Luis, Ake, Remy.

Tottenham (4-2-3-1): Lloris; Walker, Dier, Vertonghen, Rose; Bentaleb, Mason (Lamela, 71); Townsend (Dembele, 62), Eriksen, Chadli (Soldado, 80), Kane.

Substitutes not used: Vorm (gk), Fazio, Stambouli, Davies.

Booked: Chelsea Willian, Cahill, Cuadrado Tottenham Dier

Referee: A Taylor

Man of the match: Terry

Attendance: 89,297

Rating: 6