As Raphael Varane rises from his plush pillow in his London hotel room this morning, the nerves will start to kick in. For a player who has won the Champions League four times and the World Cup, the Carabao Cup final could be considered a Sunday stroll. But for United’s ‘soldier’ at the back, the butterflies will still be there.
“When it’s special, like a final, you feel different from the moment you get up in the morning,” he said. “You feel the atmosphere change. But that gives you energy, because it’s natural that when you’re afraid you run faster.”
Varane has been in fast forward for a decade. His first big honor came at age 19 when he won La Liga with Real Madrid, and there have been 20 major medals in a decorated career.
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So a Carabao Cup might not hold pride of place in his trophy room, but it’s more about the journey than the destination for the 29-year-old. He left Madrid a serial winner 18 months ago, trading the guarantee of more medals for the challenge of helping revive a club that had forgotten what it took to win over and over and over again.
If United can beat Newcastle at Wembley today, it will be their first trophy in six years. It’s his first Wembley final in five years and the occasion has a sense of renewal. It seems that Erik ten Hag has put the club back on track and that this date under the goal is just a springboard to even greater glory.
The Premier League drought will reach a decade this season and United failed to qualify for the Champions League last season, but suddenly everything seems possible again and Varane intends to enjoy the ride, having experienced the demands of fight alone to stay on top during his 10 years at Real.
“Honestly, it’s better when you’re going up,” he said. When you are at the top, the only thing that can change is to disappoint. You can’t do any better because you’re already there. When you can grow with the club and the team, it’s a great feeling.
“With Madrid my best memories are when we were going up and on the road more than at the finish”.
That 2012 title was significant for Varane and for Real. They had gone four years without winning the league and were going through a rough patch, but once the first trophy was in the bag, a trickle turned into a flood, including four Champions League wins in five years.
Varane credits that first title to changing beliefs within that team, something that feels prescient for this United team. While the Frenchman is one of several recently recruited players with an impressive resume, they have not won together as a group.
Today is an opportunity to savor that feeling of collective triumph and if it happens, Varane believes it could be the start of something bigger at Old Trafford.
“I was talking to Sergio Ramos about it in Madrid, and when we started to win, we won a lot, but before that it was the same,” he said.
“We haven’t played for Madrid for years, it was a long time, and when we win it doesn’t change the mentality, but the belief. When you win you start to think ‘well, we did it, so now we can do it again'”. .’
“It’s all about the winning mentality and when you start winning you just want to win and nothing else. It doesn’t mean that when you’re not winning you don’t want to. But you do believe more is possible and sometimes you also need a little luck. And when you are more confident, you bring luck with you. It’s a positive cycle.”
Varane, who praises Ten Hag’s “discipline” and “tactical details”, speaks in a box overlooking the Old Trafford pitch and although the stadium is empty, he points to the stands as he talks about the connection being created between players and fans. .
That’s a relationship that has frayed in recent years and even in August, the visiting winger at Brentford was telling players they weren’t fit to wear the shirt.
Last season was one humiliation after another, but the transformation in mood this season has been extraordinary, a change engineered by Ten Hag and his desire to improve team spirit, but also helped by the addition of some character and personality to the team.
One of them has become Varane’s partner in central defence. When asked if his relationship with the brash and intense Lisandro Martínez is like fire and ice, he nods but insists they complement each other well.
Martinez’s passion has endeared him to the fans, and his teammates are beginning to show the same outward emotion. Varane was raising his fists in all corners of Old Trafford after the derby success against Manchester City in January.
There have also been more overt displays of emotion among defenders this season, but that’s something prompted by Varane rather than Martinez.
“I think my first game this season against Liverpool,” he said, “before the game I spoke to my teammates in defense and told them it was fine, we can celebrate every game, every tackle, every good deed and create something and from this first game, we’re doing it every game.
“So it’s very positive and we can feel the energy and the connection with the fans and we have something special here at Old Trafford so we have to use it because we can lose 3-0 but with Old Trafford something can change and we can win.” every game even when we’re losing.
“We have to feel that confidence and that energy that we have to use it.”
This desire to celebrate each defensive contribution would suit one of Varane’s former bosses, José Mourinho, a coach who also trusted the center-back as a young Real Madrid defender.
That might go against the idea that Mourinho doesn’t trust youth, but for Varane it wasn’t about his age, it was about his ability to go to war.
“I think that for him the most important thing is not age, it’s the mentality, and (he thinks) ‘if he’s a soldier, I can put him in’. So it wasn’t the characteristics of how I play, it was the mentality,” he said. Is he still a soldier? “Yes I am.”
Their battleground is now Old Trafford instead of the Bernabéu and perhaps it was fate that they would always end up here one day. Sir Alex Ferguson tried to sign him from Lens when he was 18 and instead of Real beating United it was a change of strategy to sign Chris Smalling that ended the move.
“I was very close to coming here. I think we were in agreement, I think Lens and Manchester, but then, I don’t know, I think Manchester change their minds and maybe they sign another player or they have other options,” he said. Varane, who thought he was heading to Old Trafford in 2010.
Real Madrid wasn’t a bad consulting prize, but 13 years later he’s finally at United and embracing the journey. Wembley on Sunday could be the first of many stops.
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