Super Sunday! Part 2: Papa Johns Trophy Weekend!

Hello there and welcome back!

This time with Super Sunday, we focus on the EFL Trophy weekend double header!

This weekend plays out 2 finals, with last seasons final on the Saturday and this seasons final on the Sunday with both finals being played at Wembley stadium.

The EFL trophy is a cup tournament focused on teams from the 3rd & 4th tier of English football. It gives lower league teams a chance to play a final at Wembley because it is unrealistic they will make the finals of either the FA cup or league cup.

This years sponsor is Papa Johns pizza, so you can guess where I'm going with this.

Making the most of this cup final double header, I've made (you guessed it) pizza!

Originally I was going to make a pizza from the Papa Johns menu, but in the end I decided to make something that's a little different and may divide public opinion.

But first I will look into both finals!

The 2020 final was delayed for obvious reasons, and it features former premier league side Portsmouth and up and comers Salford City. Salford City are owned and backed by Manchester United's famous class of 92 which features David Beckham, Ryan Giggs, Paul Scholes, Nicky Butt, Phil Neville & Gary Neville.

The class of 92 own 10% of the club each, apart from becks who owns 20%. The rest is owned by business man and Valencia football club owner, Peter Lim.

Portsmouth have been out of the premier league for about 10 years and are the reigning EFL trophy champions, as they beat Sunderland in the 2019 final.

My gut feeling says Salford will get the win as Portsmouth haven't been in good form of late.

(As I'm writing this the game was being played, Salford won on penalties!)

A little amusing side note, the winner of Saturdays final will only be champions for a day!

On to this seasons final!

Sunderland look to end an 8 game losing streak at Wembley that stretches back to 1973. They take on Tranmere Rovers of league two.

I have a bit of a soft spot for Sunderland after watching Sunderland Til I Die on Netflix. Now I will admit I watched it when series 1 was released, knowing they suffer a double relegation and I watched it for the entertainment aspect because as football fans nobody wants anyone to have any kind of success.

But for series 2 my outlook was a lot different, mainly because of the passion of the fans.

I'd defiantly recommend it.

In fact it would be sods law that Sunderland break their Wembley losing streak without there being any fans there.

I think Sunderland will do it and hopefully it will be a decent push in them getting promoted to the championship. As a Forest fan, with Newcastle & Sunderland potentially joining our league, it would make for a few brilliant away games (If things have cleared up more of course).

Onto the most important part of this post, the pizza!

I only decided to make just one pizza as we had got some food in for the six nations.

I went for something a little different and made a chicken tikka pizza!

I cooked off some boneless chicken thighs marinated in tikka paste and sliced it into strips ahead of time. To go with that I also chopped up some tomatoes & red onion. For the base I used a mix of tomato puree and tikka paste, and with some mozzarella cheese to cover and some flat leaf parsley to garnish.

It was so good! Why order pizza when you can make something like this!

So that is full time on this Super Sunday post!

These are the line ups,

Those are the flavours,

AND ITS LIVE!!!!!!