The 5-3 win over the Scottish champions, Hearts, by the 1895 First Division winners was set against a backdrop of unease about money, imported players and new competitionsThe Club World Cup has never stimulated universal enthusiasm. “The whole case goes to show how undesirable such events are from a sporting point of view, and what a prostitution of titles they are,” raged the Edinburgh Evening News, but that was 1895 and it wasn’t talking about the soft-power festival of greed that, in the distant days before the virus, was supposed to be taking place in China in the summer of 2021.Rather it was talking about the first meeting of league winners of England and Scotland, of the match played 125...
The concentration of wealth and attention on a tiny number of globalised superclubs is leading to moments of remarkable drama and quality – but at a terrible priceA recent Set-Piece Menu podcast eloquently made the case for fandom as a broad church. When the Premier League is marketed so aggressively all over the world, when overseas television rights bring it so much revenue, when players and managers and owners are often foreign, they argued – quite reasonably – who is to deny the travelling supporter from Baltimore or Bangalore their seat in the stadium, the right to call themselves a fan? All of that made sense.On an intellectual level I agreed with it. It fitted my general liberal, globalised worldview....
The Netflix series is fascinating for many reasons, but primarily for the insight it gives into the plight of players who have fallen just below the standards of the game’s eliteAmong the many joys of the eight-part Netflix series Sunderland ’Til I Die is a glimpse of football that is seldom seen, and little discussed in the media. Not the behind-the-scenes problems faced by managers with limited budgets and a distant owner looking to sell. That’s all fascinating stuff, though not quite as warts-and-all gripping as Premier Passions, the 1998 fly-on-the-dressing-room-wall account of Sunderland’s relegation, in which Peter Reid’s team talks would have made a stevedore blush.No, what was most revealing was the plight of professional sportsmen a rung or,...
Jack Ross had played down the sides’ Checkatrade Trophy meeting but nobody eased up in a 4-0 victory that was played amid a fiery atmosphere at the Stadium of LightJack Ross had said he was unwilling to “dress this game up as something it’s not” but neither set of supporters listened to Sunderland’s manager.Deep down, almost everyone accepted it failed to constitute a “proper” north-east derby and compensated by simply pretending it was. Accordingly, within the first 11 minutes there were two earsplitting, giant, bangs made by firecrackers released in the away end and the scent of smoke filled the cool January night air. Related: Gary Crosby: ‘Sir Alex Ferguson called and told me what a mistake I’d made’ Related:...
A sense of loss is all-pervading in a Netflix series chronicling Sunderland’s relegation into League One but, throughout, a sense of optimism shines out from most fansIt’s the hope that kills them, Sunderland fans can handle the despair. And it is a prevailing sense of hope that percolates throughout all eight episodes of a behind-the-scenes documentary chronicling the club’s relegation to the third tier of English football last season. Throughout a preposterously chaotic campaign, even by the standards of a club long considered utterly dysfunctional, Sunderland’s fans remain surprisingly upbeat, despite having grown wearily accustomed to coping with apparently bottomless levels of crushing disappointment. Related: Sunderland's hall of shame: club's (mostly bad) signings under Short The transformation of Jason Steele...