A teenage girl shinned up a lampost and held a pyro which spewed out thick pink smoke. Another lampost had a lad clinging to it for dear life but still punching the air and belting out Dons chants. A section of the city centre was choked with people. One by one the Aberdeen players took their turn at the front of the open-top bus, vivid red with “winners” emblazoned on the side. Each theatrically heaved the Scottish Cup in the air and conducted the roars of a crowd thought to be up to 100,000 strong. Soon they did it all again on a balcony of the city’s Town House, a balcony where Fergie and Willie Miller showed off the Cup Winner’s Cup.
New heroes now. Jimmy Thelin, Graeme Shinnie, Dimitar Mitov and the rest. Kevin Nisbet wearing shades. Jamie McGrath holding the cup before leaving to join Hibs and laughing when the fans below chanted “Hibs … Hibs are falling apart, again.” Shayden Morris — the fans’ favourite “Shady Mo” — looking like he hadn’t held back on the celebrations on Saturday night. He wasn’t the only one. A 12pm cup parade was a bit too early for some fans’ liking. Does no-one respect hangovers any more?
It was emotional around Union Street yesterday. Aberdeen win trophies so infrequently — this was their first one in 11 years and their first Scottish Cup in 35 — that when they do come around it serves as a reminder of two things. One, how special it is when a one-club city — with apologies to Cove Rangers in the suburbs — delivers something for its people. The bars, restaurants and shops has Dons red everywhere. The Granite City is not in Newcastle or Naples’ league when it comes to in-your-face fanaticism but on days like these, when there are red ribbons on the cup for once and the buzz is palpable, the bond feels special.
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In one pub they played “The European Song” and everyone inside sang along to every line. A guy walked in holding aloft an inflatable cup and got a comically exaggerated reaction, as if Thelin himself had turned up with the real thing. The local radio station, Northsound, filmed a vox pop in the city with everyone wearing Dons colours including the interviewer. A tiny lad with a flag over his shoulders told her: “Hopefully we can keep going with this good play.”
Secondly, the sheer energy around Aberdeen and its club since the moment Mitov’s saves decided the final underlined just how a club is refreshed and reinvigorated by winning something at last. The weekend’s glory will be revisited, enjoyed, marketed, commercially milked and reminisced upon forever. Celtic have been so dominant they have pretty much monopolised all of those benefits in recent seasons but Aberdeen can feast on this for years. Thelin, Mitov and the rest have a lifetime of reunion invites ahead now. They’ll always be the class of 2025.
In the short-term the rewards are tangible. They will come into the Europa League play-off now rather than the Conference League second qualifying round, meaning a longer break over the summer for the players and the transformational certainty of group stage football until December. That will mean £5million or so to address the shortfalls of a team which rose like a phoenix on Saturday after months of largely wretched Premiership form.
A challenge for Thelin, now, will be to juggle a strong league campaign with a diet of Thursday night games. Neither Aberdeen nor Hearts have managed that. “It’s a habit,” he said. “That’s why I say it’s so important to get in as many years in a row as you can. Celtic have been there for a while and they can manage this. You have to live it and try it. If you are good in the league over time, you’re going to grow in every competition. So that’s so important for us, to be stable.
“[Chairman] Dave Cormack, [chief executive] Alan Burrows and [director of football] Steven Gunn have been so supportive the whole way. And we have never changed direction. It’s always been ‘we keep working, we keep believing’. The staff at Cormack Park and Pittodrie feel it all the time that it’s pushing, pushing, pushing. This season Pittodrie has been sold-out many times with the fans’ support. There is a lot of energy in the city right now. We try to use that to create a strong team. I mean the whole club, the city, everybody. There were people from Australia here to see this final.”
Thelin has made a sacrifice of his own to succeed at Aberdeen. His wife and young son and daughter still live in Sweden. That means “a lot of Zoom calls” instead of disrupting their schooling. “We know what we are doing but, of course, it’s your family and it’s always difficult. No one has forced me to do this. We are aligned in this process. I’m so proud of them.” No doubt it is mutual. Supporters chanted his name at the cup parade. At one point he grabbed two giant red drumsticks and thumped out a beat. Then he held up a large Dons flag. He looked like he was having the time of his life.
Since last winning the Scottish Cup in 1990, Aberdeen had lost three finals and been beaten in six out of eight cup finals overall. There had been cup exits to Stenhousemuir, Queen of the South and Darvel, among plenty more. They had gone through 12,796 days and 13 managers.
There was another Hibs connection to the final. It wasn’t just that Aberdeen’s win meant they displaced Hibs from that Europa League play-off, but the sense that Saturday’s was a triumph which burrowed as deep into the supporters’ psyche as the 2016 final did for Hibs, when that ended a 114 year wait. The reaction is different when a support has longed for something for decades. The relief and release is deeper, the reactions more visceral. Over Saturday and Sunday the taps were turned on and Aberdeen’s emotions poured out.
