When Sunderland last played European football, club directors viewed it as a useful means of raising the cash necessary to fund floodlight upgrades at Roker Park necessitated by England’s widespread adoption of colour television.
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Back in the autumn of 1973 a lighting system compatible with the demands of broadcasting in black and white was proving increasingly outdated and Sunderland responded by doubling admission prices for the second leg of their opening European Cup Winners’ Cup tie against Vasas of Budapest. Coming at a moment when miners and railway workers were engaged in long-running industrial action and north-easterners’ finances were duly tight, it dictated that a disappointing crowd of under 23,000 turned out to watch Dennis Tueart’s penalty secure a 3-0 aggregate win.
Fifty-three years on, Wearside’s financial outlook is once again uncertain as the gig economy makes security a stranger for many and the cost of living spirals, but a near 49,000-capacity crowd is still expected at the Stadium of Light on Wednesday night.
Sunderland’s opening Europa League match against AZ Alkmaar will be televised across much of the world in HD but if Granit Xhaka has his way, viewers may need to adjust their brightness controls.
“The stadium will be on fire,” says Sunderland’s captain, who at Arsenal and Bayer Leverkusen played in two Europa League finals, losing twice. “And I want to see our players on fire, on and off the ball. I’ve always been a dreamer and, for me, it’s a big, big dream to reach another European final and to get it with this club.”
This opportunity is one of the reasons why the 33-year-old Switzerland midfielder resisted overtures from his old friend Xabi Alonso to join Chelsea this summer. Four months ago, after Sunderland, coincidentally, beat Chelsea at the Stadium of Light to secure a seventh-place finish in the Premier League and only the second European adventure in their history, Xhaka grabbed a microphone and declared: “This is just the beginning; we want more.”
Now Régis Le Bris’s side are balancing the notoriously tricky demands of a second top-tier season following promotion with the glamour of a competition that in December will transport them to San Siro and a fixture that has forced Newcastle fans to retire an oft-repeated and much-adored chant declaring: “You’ll never see a Mackem in Milan.”
T-shirts emblazoned with the jubilant message “Mackem in Milan” are fast becoming a staple of Sunderland supporters’ wardrobes but first they want to see their team overcome a free-scoring AZ side who have won five and drawn one of their opening Eredivisie matches. Xhaka may well find himself up against Kees Smit, a 20-year-old widely regarded as among Europe’s most promising young midfielders.
Back in 1973-74 Sunderland were European underdogs, a Second Division team who found themselves unexpectedly engaged in continental combat, thanks to a famous FA Cup final triumph against Leeds. But Le Bris’s class of 2026-27 do not want to be seen as almost accidental tourists.
“It’s a privilege to be here,” says Sunderland’s French manager. “I’m proud but we’ve earned it, the players worked very hard last season. Now we have a good opportunity and it’s important to go all in.
“We want to be strong in both the Premier League and Europe. The players are looking forward to facing AZ; they’re excited. They want to be involved in this competition.”
If Le Bris and his playmaker Enzo Le Fée have travelled a long way since the moment 14 years ago when Sunderland’s manager, then a lowly academy coach in Brittany at Lorient, began working with the 12-year-old Le Fée, so, too, has that pair’s adopted home.
Five years ago Luke O’Nien was playing for Sunderland in League One, facing teams such as Accrington Stanley and Fleetwood. On Wednesday night he will be part of Le Bris’s matchday squad, offering living, breathing proof of the club’s astonishing rebirth under the transformative majority ownership of Kyril Louis-Dreyfus.
Whereas 53 years ago the Cup Winners’ Cup campaign coincided with the break-up of Bob Stokoe’s Wembley heroes of 1973 and concluded with a narrow aggregate defeat at the hands of Sunderland’s second opponents, Sporting, Louis-Dreyfus intends this to be the first of many European adventures. Certainly Le Bris’s squad seem much better prepared than those members of the Roker Park board who, as the club historian, Rob Mason, details in his excellent Sunderland AFC: The Definitive History, were victims of pickpocketing on that trip to Lisbon.
If it helps that Nordi Mukiele, Reinildo, Omar Alderete, Noah Sadiki, Le Fée, Brian Brobbey and Xhaka constitute a raft of players with previous European experience, the captain is confident the collective mindset is attuned correctly. “To succeed in Europe you need energy in the dressing room,” says Xhaka. “And that is what we have. The first step I took in the dressing room last season, I had a very good feeling. I could smell that it was special.
“So the energy, the mindset is there. If you don’t have this desire, this hunger, this mentality to compete every single day, forget about this level. But this team has it and, game by game, this team will show it. You need luck but I’m very positive and optimistic that we can go very far in this competition.
“The energy, the connectivity, the togetherness in our dressing room is amazing. I’m grateful that I’m here.”
