So, would John Terry have felt something was missing from the most illustrious of Chelsea careers had he completed 19 seasons in the team without scoring a cup final goal?

He was certainly not short on cup final appearances – 10 in total – and he had won the vast majority. But while Terry's peerless defensive and leadership qualities contributed greatly to those successes, it was not until his last outing in a Chelsea final that he found the net.

It was in 2015 against Tottenham Hotspur that the goal came. It helped the Blues secure a 2-0 victory at Wembley and lift the trophy Chelsea will be looking to reclaim against Liverpool on Sunday.

Terry’s goal following a set-piece delivery broke the deadlock in that final and nine years later, he contemplates the question with which we began.

‘Yeah, I think there would have been something missing,’ he decides, happy to look back on an undoubted career high point. ‘I hit the post against Portsmouth a few years earlier but apart from that I didn’t really come close to be honest, not even from corners and stuff like that.

‘It was nice to tick that off the list and to be able to say that it came against them, I'm glad I waited for that one!’

It's no secret Terry's rivalry with Tottenham ran as deep as it does for many Chelsea fans. When it came to capital-city clashes, this one mattered most to him.

Victory in a tough semi-final against Liverpool had served up the meeting with Spurs, in what at the time was appropriately called the Capital One Cup final.

The League Cup, to give it its traditional name, had always been an important competition for Terry. Like many teenage prospects, he made his debut in one of its early rounds, back in 1998, and in 2005 it was the trophy he first lifted as captain.

Two years later, the Blues won it in Cardiff again, although on that occasion he could not enjoy the victory in quite the same way.

When Terry highlights the instances he came close to a cup final goal, he could add the split-second he spotted the chance to send the ball towards the Arsenal net in 2007 from inside the six-yard box.

With his focus solely on putting the Blues ahead, our skipper bravely went in his head but felt the leather of Abou Diaby’s boot rather than the leather of the ball. He was knocked unconscious and was soon on his way to hospital.

‘Actually, I should have scored that one,’ Terry insists, with a slight flicker of a smile.

The former England captain was discharged from hospital in time to rejoin his teammates after the game but could remember none of the second half and slept for a whole day as he recovered.

Major motivation

A year later came a 2008 League Cup final against Tottenham, with the final back at Wembley. Despite taking the lead – inevitably through Didier Drogba – Avram Grant’s Chelsea lost 2-1.

‘Even though it is 16 years ago, that one hurts,’ Terry reveals. ‘We lost bigger finals but the manner of it and the difference between the sides in the league…we should have walked all over them. We got caught off guard a little, so yeah, it still hurts.

‘I can never watch it back. I'll never want to see the game again. They were such a big rival of mine and the history between the sides is massive. It has become quite spicy over the years as well. You look at the Battle of the Bridge later on. So these finals were important.’

It is clear that come the Wembley rematch in 2015, there was already plenty of motivation for revenge for Terry, Drogba, Frank Lampard and Petr Cech, who had all played seven years earlier.

But for the entirety of the squad, there was what had taken place against Tottenham earlier in the 2014/15 campaign.

That came during Jose Mourinho’s second spell in charge and his team was making an ultimately successful tilt at the Premier League title.

Yet while we had won 3-0 in the Stamford Bridge meeting in December, on New Year’s Day came the jolt of a 5-3 loss at White Hart Lane, only the second defeat of the season. That meant unfinished business.

‘It got brought up in the manager’s team talk in the build-up to the final,’ recalls Terry.

‘That defeat was a wake-up call and at the time when you lose to a rival away from home, it’s obviously not a good feeling but then you look at the result in the cup final and it had maybe given us a little kick up the backside.

‘We were in good form and the manager pulled a big move by playing Kurt Zouma in the holding midfield role, which none of us saw coming. It was a pure masterclass from the manager to nullify Tottenham completely.’

Key choices

Nemanja Matic, who would normally have been the one charged with disrupting the link between Christian Eriksen and Harry Kane link, had been lost to suspension.

‘Jose had flirted with a few different formations and ideas in training but the Kurt one just came out of absolute nowhere,’ Terry continues.

‘Watch the game back and you see the amount of good work Kurt did in there, not in terms of being on the ball but breaking up play, picking up first balls, second balls, it was another defender in front of us.

'And if one of us in defence broke out, he could step in there naturally as well.

‘With Harry Kane dropping a little deeper, he was actually going into Kurt’s space a lot of time and Kurt was left to deal with him. Us central defenders were dealing with their late runners and with Kane coming short and everyone else going in behind, it just worked perfectly.

'But in the build-up to it, no one knew who was playing or what was going to happen. That can keep the players on their toes.’

One further selection decision was to give Cech, no longer the first choice since the arrival of Thibaut Courtois, his last cup final outing for Chelsea. Courtois had played both the semi-final games against Liverpool while Cech had been in goal for the earlier rounds.

‘We were lucky with the keepers we had,’ says Terry, unsurprisingly. ‘When you take one player out and bring in another, if there's even a 10 per cent drop then in a final that can be a big difference.

'But the trust in Big Pete we had as a team, the trust the manager had, and the fans as well, it was like nothing had changed. Pete was such a big, big part of the dressing room and he deserved that one, for sure.’

The likes of Cech, Terry and Mourinho knew from their 2005 experience what a boost a League Cup triumph could be to more silverware success that season and beyond. They were eager for that energy again a decade later, with Chelsea having gone four years without a league title.

‘It was Jose’s mentality when he first came in, the importance of the first trophy available,’ explains JT. ‘As a player, I had never looked at it that way before but he said this is a great starting point. To win the first trophy early put a benchmark down and you go from there, the mentality shifts.

‘We wanted to win every game of course but with how often we won the League Cup in our time, it was special to us and it spurred us on. Three days later you're back playing again in the league so you move on very quickly, but it's a big boost to the squad.’

That goal!

For most of the first half against Spurs, defences were on top. But then Tottenham cleared the ball long and Terry, spotting out of the corner of his eye that Branislav Ivanovic was still upfield, scooped a high ball out to the flank.

Aware of how good the right-back was in the air, it was no hopeful punt. Terry knew exactly what he was doing.

Ivanovic won a free-kick for which the central defenders advanced into the penalty area, and when Willian’s delivery was dealt with poorly, Terry was concentration personified as he kept his shot low and scored via a deflection.

‘It was right on half time, it was a big moment,’ he smiles. ‘I was delighted to score at Wembley in the final obviously, but against them and celebrating in front of them, it just felt even better.’

Though Chelsea’s king of cup finals, Didier Drogba, did come on late in the game, Diego Costa was the main marksman that season. When his powerful drive towards goal was also deflected in during the second half, the Blues were on the way to victory.

Although not without plenty of quality defending for the rest of the game to keep Spurs well at bay; Terry made a brilliant slide tackle on Kane that he remembers to this day.

‘They had good players and they were making a move in the league having come into a bit of form the year before, but we were too strong for them at the time.

'There were a couple of good blocks from myself and Gaz [Gary Cahill] and it's one of those games where I really enjoy watching it back – with the blocks and the little bits that sometimes people don't see.

‘Diego was brilliant for us because, as with Didier, he could get us up the pitch when we were under pressure. He was a big threat running in behind as well; he’d chase everything down.

‘I think the fans loved him because of his desire and the passion he showed. Sometimes it’s not winning the ball, it’s just putting pressure on centre-halves and making them panic and do things they shouldn't be doing. That’s fantastic.

‘He was someone who trained at his full potential every single day. Gaz felt the brunt of that, week in, week out. You’d walk off with a black eye or a bloody nose or you'd had an argument.

'With the levels in training Monday to Friday, playing against Didier Drogba and Diego Costa, when you got to the weekend it felt like you strolled through the game.

‘I often felt that training was a lot harder than our Premier League games so that level of intensity we had as a group was vital to us being so successful over the years.’

With the 2015 League Cup final all but won and Terry destined for a clean sheet as well as scoring the opening goal, it was no surprise to the blue half of the stadium and the millions of Chelsea fans watching globally when his name was announced as man of the match.

‘Being at Wembley as well was special,’ he says. ‘We were at Cardiff for a couple of cup final wins and it just didn't feel right.

‘We had a lot of joy at Wembley and the stadium felt right. I was so superstitious as a player and I always wanted to be in the right dressing room. We didn’t lose in that dressing room and the one time we were on the other side, we lost that final to Spurs.

‘I hate stuff like that so I would be on the case of Dave Barnard [Chelsea’s director of football operations] weeks before, saying get us the dressing room on that side.

'It sounds like a small thing but there’s importance in walking in and going yeah, we’re good here, compared with the opposite feeling when you go the other side and that doesn't feel right.

‘I never went into games thinking I’ll be man of the match, or even late on in games thought I might get man of the match here. I've had some of my best games and you walk off and there's no talk about what you've done.

‘As a defender, it's a bit of a tightrope because you can have your best games and do everything really simply, really well, and don't get noticed at all. In other games you can make one slight mistake that leads to a goal and it's a disaster.

‘So the award was not something I was thinking about but when you hear it over the tannoy with a couple of minutes to go and we were 2-0 up, the game was done, it brought that little smile to my face.

‘It's a trophy that sits proudly for sure.'