1961 Football League Cup final
association football match

The 1961 Football League Cup final was the inaugural League Cup final. It was contested by Rotherham United and Aston Villa over two legs. Aston Villa won 3–2 on aggregate.
Due to fixture congestion, the second leg was not played until after the start of the 1961–62 season. As a result, Villa began their defence of the trophy just eight days after winning it. Though all League clubs were eligible to participate, Arsenal, Sheffield Wednesday, Tottenham Hotspur, West Bromwich Albion and Wolverhampton Wanderers did not enter. The prize money for winning the competition was £750. The two clubs would not play each other again until they met in the same competition in August 2013. Both clubs received first round byes.
Players and officials
First leg
Second leg
Road to the final
Aston Villa
References
"England – League Cup Finals 1961–2001".
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “1961 Football League Cup final” is association football match. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Football, League and final, not as a finished interpretation.
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Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 11, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4570334. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1961, 2013 and 2001.
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This entry incorporates text from “1961 Football League Cup final” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.