Jose Mourinho reached his first final as Tottenham manager after Son Heung-min and Moussa Sissoko clinched a 2-0 victory over Brentford in the League Cup on Tuesday.
But he will have to wait 110 days before Tottenham contests the final against either of the Manchester clubs, with City playing United in the other semi-final on Wednesday.
Second-division team Brentford knocked out four Premier League sides to reach the semi-finals, but gifted Tottenham an opening goal in the 12th minute when Sissoko was left unmarked for a header.
But Tottenham took until the 70th minute to extend its lead when Son lifted the ball into the net after Harry Kane and Tanguy Ndombele combined for the breakaway.
Brentford, which had been denied an equalizer when a VAR review spotted — through a forensic examination of footage — that Ivan Toney was marginally offside with his knee before scoring.
The west London club finished with 10 men after Josh Dasilva’s high studs-up challenge left Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg with a gash on his left shin.
And Mourinho, who won the League Cup three times across spells in charge of Chelsea and Manchester United, will have a chance to deliver Tottenham’s first trophy since winning the competition in 2008.
The song “Spurs are on their way to Wembley” was played on the final whistle at Tottenham’s empty stadium. The final has been pushed from February to April 25 in the hope that fans will be allowed in — unlike any sporting event now in the country.
This semif-inal was the first game since the start of England’s third lockdown on Tuesday, with the toughest laws since those imposed in early stage of the pandemic last March when even professional sport was prohibited.
A return to Wembley will be familiar for Tottenham, which used the north London stadium as a temporary home from 2017 to 2019 while its new stadium was being built.
But Spurs haven’t contested a final there since losing to a Chelsea side managed by Mourinho in 2015 in the League Cup.
This is the only trophy Tottenham has won — also in 1999 — since lifting the FA Cup in 1991.
