3 April 2008
VIDEO: Final first leg - Chelsea 1-1 Manchester City

Watch the highlights from a thrilling game at Chelsea where Gael Kakuta's towering header cancelled out Daniel Sturridge's opener.

Manchester City

3-1

Chelsea

Mee 23, Weiss 34, Ball (pen) 86

(4-2 agg)

McGivern og 6

The FA Youth Cup Sponsored by E.ON
Final, Second Leg 
7.45pm, Wednesday 16 April 2008
City Of Manchester Stadium, Manchester City FC 

Manchester City youth team coach Alex Gibson hailed his young Blues after they came from behind to beat Chelsea 3-1 and win The FA Youth Cup Final at Eastlands.

Despite falling behind to a sixth-minute own goal by Ryan McGivern, City fought back well with goals from captain Ben Mee and impressive winger Vladimir Weiss capping some fine attacking play and giving them a deserved half-time lead.

The hosts, who were appearing in their second Final in three years, then tired after the break but David Ball converted a late penalty to seal a 4-2 aggregate win and give City their first FA Youth Cup for 22 years.

"We went close two years ago against Liverpool and I think the fans, the Board and the senior management team were all itching for a trophy," said Gibson.

"Jim (Cassell, City's Academy Director) and I have been working together now for ten years and putting a bit of silverware on the table has been absolutely fantastic.

"Both teams wanted to counter-attack," he added. "We do an awful lot of work here on forward play and that showed tonight.

"Certainly by the end of the game we were running out of energy but the boys have a great attitude and they just kept going.

"We've talked about weathering the storm in games, sometimes it might be for five minutes or 20 minutes.

"Tonight we had a good spell of weathering the storm and I thought we did it very well. They had one or two really good attacks at the end but we dug in there.

"I thought we did very well defensively tonight and showed some great counter-attack play as well."

City's first-team manager Sven-Goran Eriksson and some first-team players were amongst a 19,753 crowd at the City of Manchester Stadium, and the former England Head Coach went into City's changing room after the game to congratulate the young Blues.

"He was absolutely delighted," said Gibson. "He thanked the players and the staff, and just commented on how well they've done this evening."