It is the date that Callum McManaman will forever be associated with.
May 11, 2013. The day Wigan - little Wigan Athletic - pulled off a Wembley miracle.
It is probably the greatest FA Cup upset of the modern era. Roberto Martinez’s Latics were 12/1 outsiders that day, taking on a Manchester City side that had won the Premier League the previous year, and which contained the likes of Sergio Aguero, Carlos Tevez, David Silva and Yaya Toure, among others.
And yet Wigan won. McManaman, then just 22, was unplayable. He tormented Gael Clichy all afternoon. Pablo Zabaleta fouled him twice and was sent off. City simply couldn’t handle him. He had already been confirmed as man of the match by the time Ben Watson, the substitute, headed Wigan’s dramatic late winner.
“It’s funny,” McManaman tells Goal now, almost seven years on. “I bumped into Ben just before Christmas and he was joking with me, saying ‘I’m the one who got the glory, everyone remembers me more than you!’
“I think at the time, you probably don’t realise how big a day it was, what a big achievement it was. But as the years go by – and around this time of year obviously it always comes up as a memory – you start to understand what it meant. It’s nice to look back and think ‘wow yeah, we did that!’”
McManaman laughs when it is suggested the game could be known as ‘The McManaman final’. Instead, he credits Martinez for Wigan’s success.
“He never gets the credit he deserves for that game,” he says. “His tactics that day were unbelievable.
“He had James McArthur playing right wing-back and Roger Espinoza left wing-back. He had no strikers, with me and [Arouna] Kone playing like high wingers. City didn’t know what we were playing, they didn’t know who to mark.
“I’ve never been one for watching games back to be honest, but I watched this one recently on YouTube, and Clichy didn’t know what to do. He didn’t know whether to go forward or to stay. Martinez did an unbelievable job there.”
McManaman had been a key figure in Wigan’s run to the final. He had scored at Wembley in the semi-final win over Millwall, but it is the quarter-final which really sticks in his mind.
“That was the best day of my life,” he says, referring to the 3-0 win over Everton at Goodison Park. McManaman scored that day too, making a point to the club he had supported all his life, and which had broken his heart by releasing him as a 15-year-old.
“I turned a bit bitter towards Everton for a time,” he says. “I was a massive Blue and I’d joined the academy at the age of six.
“I’d come through with the likes of Jack Rodwell, Adam Forshaw, Jose Baxter and Jay Wallace. I was much smaller than those players. They were men, I was a baby. The club had told my mum and dad that they’d wait for me to grow, but they let me go and it killed me.
“Everyone at my school knew I was at Everton and thought I was going to make it, so I was embarrassed to go back and face them. I stopped going. I went off the rails a bit, to be honest.”
Everton did at least look after him. Martin Waldron, the Blues’ former academy coach, organised a trial for McManaman at Wigan. He got in, and never looked back.
Suddenly, a few years later, he was lining up against Everton, showing them what they could have won.
“I enjoyed that more than the final, to be honest!” he laughs. “It meant that much to me personally, because of what had happened.
“All my mates were in the Wigan end, even some of the Evertonians! It was an early kick-off and I remember coming out of the ground, walking on my own with my rucksack. The place was deserted.
“I hadn’t even looked at my phone, and I got to the Gwladys Street end, turned right and eight or 10 of my mates are running at me, jumping on me. Half Blue, half Red. It was an amazing moment. We went to my local in Rainhill that night, all the family and all the lads. It was a good night!”
The celebrations after the final were more reserved. The game kicked off at 5.30pm, with Premier League fixtures played on the same day. Having had the euphoria of their victory, Wigan had a league game at Arsenal just three days later, and if they lost they would be relegated.
“That took the shine off a bit,” says McManaman. “The final should be a showpiece occasion, the end of the season, 3pm kick off.
“Instead, we get home late on the Saturday, then we’re back in for a recovery session on the Sunday afternoon and on the Monday we’re travelling back to London for a make-or-break league game. There was no time to properly enjoy what we’d done.”
Especially for McManaman, whose fortunes would shift dramatically. On the Tuesday morning, he’d been called up by England for the Under-21 European Championship, but that night at the Emirates he would tear ligaments in his ankle, watching from the dressing room as Wigan were relegated with a 4-1 defeat. “It was a weird week,” he says now, with grim understatement.
That summer, Martinez left for Everton, taking with him four members of his cup-winning team. McManaman stayed, but wonders now whether he missed an opportunity.
“I do think I kind of missed the boat,” he says. “There were rumours of Premier League clubs but nothing concrete. And at the time I was happy, I’d just moved house, I was settled.
“And,” he adds. “I thought we were nailed-on to come straight back up.”
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His faith was misplaced. Owen Coyle, Martinez’s replacement, lasted less than six months before being replaced by Uwe Rosler. McManaman describes his relationship with the German as “love-hate” though together they would enjoy another famous FA Cup win over Manchester City, winning 2-1 at the Etihad in the 2014 quarter-final.
That set up another Wembley trip, a semi-final against Arsenal. McManaman again delivered, winning the penalty from which Jordi Gomez put Wigan ahead, but this time there would be no happy ending.
“Rosler took me off right after,” he says. “I will never forgive him for that. We tried to hang on, and [Per] Mertesacker scored late on. Arsenal won on penalties.
“I still regret that to this day. We’d have played Hull in the final, and I think we’d have beaten them. We could have won two straight FA Cups as Wigan. Imagine that.”
If that was a regret, what followed is even more so. McManaman, finally, got his move back to the Premier League, but chose his club – or rather his manager – poorly.
“West Brom yeah,” he says, ruefully. “I kind of knew at the time it was a risk, but it was the only move on the table at the time for me. It was a good offer, and it was the Premier League. Wigan needed the money, and you could kind of see where they were headed.
“I should have gone to West Brom in the summer under Alan Irvine, but I wanted to stay at home. I still regret that now. Then in the January, I’m thinking it could be my last chance to get back to the Prem.”
Irvine, of course, had been sacked by the time McManaman got to the Hawthorns, replaced by Tony Pulis, a manager with whom the winger just could not connect.
“It just didn’t work,” he admits. “Training was just shape, shape, shape, every day. I hated it.
“The first six months I was in and out, doing OK. And then the start of the next season (2015-16) I played against Chelsea. It was Pedro’s debut, I remember, and I played well. I thought it was my chance, but I was on the bench for the next game and thought ‘what can I do here?’
“A few days later we played Everton. He knew I was a big Blue, and he’d promised me I was playing. I didn’t start, so I was fuming. Then we were 2-0 up, so I thought ‘no chance I’m getting on now, he’ll go defensive’.
“Then Everton make it 2-2 and he’s got one sub left. It’s me or Rickie Lambert, and he sends Lambert on. My head was gone from that point.
“I went in to see him the next day, we had words and I never started another game for him.”
Instead, McManaman watched his career drift, his enthusiasm for the game waning with each passing week.
“They were tough times,” he says. “I never spoke to anyone about it, but I probably should have.
“When I wasn’t even in the squad, watching Gillette Soccer Saturday every weekend, and then having to go into training of a Monday, knowing I’m not going to play, that was hard. I wasn’t able to enjoy football.”
He tried his hand elsewhere. A loan to Sheffield Wednesday, a season with a Sunderland side doomed to relegation to League One and, last season, a return to Wigan under Paul Cook.
Now, he’s back in the Championship at Luton, hoping to get some stability and consistency. He had played 23 times before the season was suspended in March, though only 10 of those appearances had been starts.
“I think I’ve suffered from being seen as an impact player,” he says. “Because I’m explosive and I try things, I’ve almost played myself into this role as a sub. I’m trying to change that perception.
“I basically lost three years of my career after going to West Brom, and it has been hard to get that rhythm back. You need a run of games, and I’ve not really been able to get it.
“But I’m definitely enjoying it more now than I have for a few years. I’m 28, but I’ve not got too many miles on the clock, if you get me? I’ve played less than 250 games, so physically I feel fit and strong still.
“I don’t know if I’ll ever get back to the Premier League, but I know I can still play to a decent level. I just want to be playing consistently now. I’ve lost enough time.”
We finish by returning to that FA Cup final. A career high, one that, looking back, even relegation cannot diminish.
“I saw David Moyes saying a few years ago that teams didn’t want to end up like Wigan, winning a cup but going down,” McManaman says. “Is he for real?!
“I guarantee you not one Wigan fan, or player, would swap that FA Cup for staying in the Premier League. They’ll remember that day forever.
"I know I will.”
