The boyhood Sunderland fan will try and do his part and hopes his parent club take care of Newcastle at Wembley
06:00, 15 Mar 2025
Luca Stephenson andOluwaseun Adewumi in action
Luca Stephenson is hoping it will be a Beautiful Sunday. That would see a Dundee United win in the derby and then Liverpool lifting the Carabao Cup.
Stephenson wants to aid United’s European push with a home win over Dundee. The Sunderland fan will then be rushing off looking for his parent club to beat Newcastle in the English League Cup final.
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He said: “Fingers crossed! “The perfect Sunday would be Sunday night us winning then going back home, putting my feet up on the couch and watching Liverpool tonk Newcastle, hopefully. Yes, as they say, a perfect Sunday that would be.”
It will be the young midfielder’s first taste of the derby at Tannadice. Stephenson has won one and lost one at Dens Park.
The last time was the rather sore Scottish Cup defeat, which United will be looking to avenge. The United player claimed: “I will be looking forward to playing here because obviously I missed the one on the opening day. “So, as good as they've been over the road, especially the first one because we won the game, I'm really looking forward to getting here and seeing what it's like at our own stadium with our own fans here.”
Stephenson lives in the city and knows first hand what it means to the fans. He joked: “You can't walk around Asda without being told what the game means to the people around here.”
Stephenson is aware of the city bragging rights having come through the ranks with the Liverpool v Everton rivalry. He admitted: “It's similar, I think. “I've been a little bit around first team derbies, not played in one, but kind of similar as in the stadiums are so close together. “It’s kind of divides families and stuff like that.
"You notice the difference here - when I play youth team derbies down there, there's no fans there. “It's intense on the pitch, but around the stadium we play in, there's not many fans in the ground. “Whereas, you come here and you've got however many up in on Sunday, 12,000-13,000 screaming and it means as much to them as it does to us. “It’s massively different.”
Luca Stephenson
Stephenson had the upper hand in Merseyside and is looking for that to continue on Tayside. He stated: “I won most, I'd say. “We were always much better than Everton. “The tougher game, to be fair, used to be Man United, which down there is probably equally as rivalled. “So the Man United games always used to be the tougher ones than the Everton ones.”
Stephenson has his own experiences as a Sunderland fan in their derby with Newcastle. The United player added: I’ve been to a few of them, yes. I do not enjoy going to them one bit, put it that way.
“So I know how these lot will feel in the stadium watching us on Sunday, because they were some of the most uncomfortable 90 minutes of my life when I was younger watching those games, Sunderland-Newcastle.
“Sunderland won six in a row before they got relegated and I went to just about all six of them. So they were good experiences but I can't say I enjoyed many of them.
“You've still got to know what it means to people and means to people in the city, but you've got to take yourself out of that type of thing and treat it like another game. Keep your level head and not get caught up in the moment too much.
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“Of course, play the moment for the first five or ten minutes and be out at 100mph, but then you've got to kind of look at it and go, right, it's a game.
“We've got to be settled and we've got to play our stuff."