Sunderland’s first European away trip in 53 years is a moment to savour after a remarkable journey shaped by the finest of margins.
For 53 years, Sunderland supporters have travelled almost everywhere except Europe.
They have done the long roads through the Championship, endured four seasons of League One and followed their club to places that scarcely figured in anybody’s ambitions when the Stadium of Light opened its doors.
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They have watched Sunderland fall out of the Premier League, then fall again, and discovered that the bottom of football’s staircase can arrive alarmingly quickly. Now, at last, they are taking passports. Sunderland’s first European away trip since 1973 is more than another fixture. It is a chance to reflect on the extraordinary distance covered and, perhaps more importantly, the narrowness of some of the turns along the way.
History prefers a clean narrative. Football seldom provides one. At Hillsborough in May 2022, Sunderland stood frighteningly close to another season in League One. Sheffield Wednesday had levelled the play-off semi-final and, for a time, looked like the likely side to settle it. Then came a break, a low cross and Patrick Roberts arriving in stoppage time.
A few seconds altered the direction of a football club. Three years later, at Wembley, the margins were finer still. Sheffield United led the Championship play-off final and thought they had scored again. Harrison Burrows’ effort was in the net. At 2-0, with Sunderland struggling, the consequences hardly required imagination.
Then VAR intervened. Vinicius Souza was adjudged to have interfered with Anthony Patterson from an offside position. The goal disappeared. Sunderland remained alive. By the end, they had turned defeat into promotion, completing a journey from League One to the Premier League in three years. Europe followed after a remarkable first-campaign seventh-placed finish.
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There is no sensible way of knowing what happens if either of those moments falls differently. That is the seductive cruelty of football. We pretend clubs are shaped by strategies, budgets and five-year plans – and of course they are – but occasionally the grand machinery of history turns on somebody stretching a boot towards a cross or a man in a room drawing a line across a television screen.
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Sunderland have known the other side of those margins. This is a club whose supporters endured record-low Premier League points totals... twice, consecutive relegations and years when the indignities seemed to arrive with industrial efficiency. They kept turning up anyway. Which is why Europe belongs to them in a particular way.
There will be new cities now, airport bars, unfamiliar railway stations and red-and-white gatherings in foreign squares. There will be the peculiar thrill of seeing Sunderland’s name alongside clubs previously encountered only on television or in the later stages of Football Manager. Above all, there will be memories to make and unknown pleasures to discover.
Football supporters are not especially good at recognising happiness while it is happening. There is always another problem: the next injury, the next transfer window, the next result. But these are the days Sunderland spent generations trying to reach. They may even prove to be the halcyon ones. The trick is noticing before they are gone.