There were a strange few minutes after full time on Sunday where time seemed to stand still. From up in the Premier Concourse, it was easy to look down at a sea of red and white as a single sentence kept on playing over and over in my head: “Sunderland are in the Europa League”.
Days later, it still hasn’t sunk in. To be perfectly honest, it might not sink in until the group stage draw is made at the end of August. Until then, we’ll be riding the crest of a wave that we all deserve to have a place
on.
I never thought I’d be spending a Sunday afternoon sitting in the sun with a pint in my hand and looking up at the other teams who have qualified for the Europa League. Juventus, AC Milan, and Benfica could be visiting the Stadium Of Light in less than six months. Just read that back to yourself — I’ve done it a million times.
Sunday was one of the best days this club has ever experienced. The stadium was baked in sunshine and it was absolutely bouncing from start to finish. We defeated the world club champions for the second time this season, and we didn’t give them an inch.
With the first part of every permutation being a Sunderland win, we needed to start on the front foot, and that’a exactly what we did. Chelsea looked half-arsed for large parts, with only Cole Palmer trying to take the game by the scruff of its neck, and if more of his teammates adopted this mentality, they might’ve given us more of a scare.
European football looked like a fading dream after the 0-5 defeat to Nottingham Forest, which turned out to be our final loss of the season. Remaining unbeaten in our final four matches and ending the season with back-to-back wins was a blow to the theory that Régis Le Bris’ teams run out of steam when a season draws an end.
Our resurgence through the divisions has happened at a lightning pace. Four years ago, I watched Alex Neil’s Sunderland draw 1-1 away at AFC Wimbledon — now we’ve finished seventh in the Premier League and are looking forward to playing European football.
The things the club has done in such a short space of time are nothing short of remarkable. We were told by fans of other clubs that we’d be down by Christmas, that we can’t sign a whole squad and expect to stay up, and that at various points in the season, we’d run out of steam. Remember our collapse during AFCON? Nope, me neither.
This summer, we’ll have weeks of being told that we’ll go down next season because we’re in Europe, although that’s happened to just one team in the Premier League era.
My favourite tweet was from a Newcastle United reporter who said he hopes that the Wear/Tyne derby is after one of our European away trips. In twelve months, we’ve gone from being told by that lot they’ll batter us to hoping they play us off the back of European trips that they won’t have next year. It’s absolutely hilarious.
Sunderland AFC is a football club that we all love to love at the moment. Our return to the Premier League couldn’t have gone much better and throughout the campaign, we’ve stood up to the established teams and are now in Europe, whereas other sides who have won a trophy on the continent in the last two years have not.
The great adventure continues for the red and white wizards, and with a summer where we can strengthen and kick on even more ahead, the ceiling of what we can achieve continues to rise. I love this club, and there’s never been a better time to be involved with Sunderland.
