2017 EFL Trophy Final

2017 EFL Trophy Final

The 2017 EFL Trophy Final was played on 2 April 2017 at Wembley Stadium. It was played between League One teams Coventry City and Oxford United. The match decided the winner of the 2016–17 tournament, a 64-team knockout tournament. Coventry were making their first appearance in a League Trophy final while for Oxford it was their second. Both teams had won a major Wembley cup final during the 1980s.

About 2017 EFL Trophy Final in brief

Summary 2017 EFL Trophy FinalThe 2017 EFL Trophy Final was played on 2 April 2017 at Wembley Stadium, London. It was played between League One teams Coventry City and Oxford United. The match decided the winner of the 2016–17 tournament, a 64-team knockout tournament. Coventry were making their first appearance in a League Trophy final while for Oxford it was their second, following a 3–2 defeat to Barnsley in the previous season’s match. Both teams had won a major Wembley cup final during the 1980s – Oxford beat Queens Park Rangers in the 1986 Football League Cup Final, and Coventry won the following season’s FA Cup Final against Tottenham Hotspur. The game was played in front of a crowd of 74,434, the highest attendance for the final since the opening of the new Wembley Stadium. The tournament originally used a straight knockout format, but was modified in 2016-17 to incorporate an initial group stage, in which a team is awarded three points for a win and zero for a defeat. In the event of a draw, a penalty shoot-out is held at the end of the game with the winner receiving two points and the loser one. It is open to all 48 clubs in EFL League One and League Two, the third and fourth tiers of the English football league system and, starting with the 2016 17 season, 16 Category One academy teams, representing clubs from the Premier League and Championship. The competition was inaugurated as the Associate Members’ Cup in the 1983–84 season and followed on from the short-lived Football League Group Cup.

The 34th edition of the competition was the 2014–15 season, when it was known as the Checkatrade Trophy. The return fixture at the Kassam Stadium a month later was won by Coventry with Kane Hemry, Jamie Sterry, Chris Maguire and Alex MacDonald all scoring as the match finished 4–1. In Coventry’s first match at the Ricoh Arena, in October 2016, Coventry beat West Ham United 2–1 with goals from Ben Stevenson and Marvin Sordell and a late consolation for Oxford by Dan Crowley. The club’s first game at the stadium since the 2005-06 season was a 2-0 win over West Ham in the League Cup semi-final. The Coventry team started the game against West Ham with just 98 away supporters – the lowest gate at a Coventry-team game since they started playing the stadium in 2005. The team finished the group stage in Southern Group D along with Wycombe Wanderers, Northampton Town, D.C. United and a West Ham academy team from a Premier League Championship club. The final took place on the same day as the return match between Coventry and West Ham, with Coventry winning 2-1. Covence finished 4th in the group, while West Ham finished 5th in Southern group D, with a total attendance of 2,091 – a record for the game – of whom just 98 were away supporters.