Sunderland A.F.C.

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Sunderland Association Football Club was formed in 1879 by a schoolmaster named James Allan, in what began as a team for local teachers. What followed was one of the most turbulent, glorious, and heartbreaking stories in the history of English football. A club that won six top-flight titles in the Victorian and Edwardian eras. A club whose goalkeeper kept a clean sheet in 87 of his 290 first division appearances. A club that once lifted the FA Cup as a second-division side, and then spent years in the third tier watching Netflix documentaries air its struggles to the world. How did the self-styled "Team of All Talents" become the subject of a cautionary tale? And how did it find its way back?

• 2. Team of All Talents

  ›

  William McGregor, the man who founded the Football League itself, gave Sunderland their first great nickname after watching them dismantle Aston Villa 7-2. That judgment stuck, because the evidence backed it up. Sunderland joined the Football League for the 1890-91 season and won the championship the very next year. They defended it the season after that, then won it again in 1894-95. Their Scottish centre forward John Campbell broke the 30-goal mark in consecutive seasons, and became top scorer in the league for the third time that final championship year.

  The 1891-92 campaign drew particular notice from The Times, which called the players "a wonderfully fine team". That same season Sunderland became the first club to score 100 goals in a season. Their goalkeeper Ned Doig anchored the defense with a record that would stand through the 19th century: a clean sheet in 30% of his top-division appearances. After beating the Scottish champions Heart of Midlothian, a contest billed as the "World Championship" match, the club's place among English football's founding giants was settled.

  Manager Tom Watson had built this dynasty from nothing, taking charge in 1888 and guiding the club to three league titles before departing to join Liverpool at the close of the 1895-96 season. His successors could not replicate the formula. But in 1902, under Scottish manager Alex Mackie, Sunderland won a fourth league title, and followed it by claiming the Sheriff of London Charity Shield.

• 3. The 1936 Season and Its Shadows

  ›

  Raich Carter and Bobby Gurney each scored 31 goals as Sunderland claimed their sixth and final league championship in 1935-36, totaling 109 goals across the season under Scottish manager Johnny Cochrane. The club then beat FA Cup winners Arsenal to take the Charity Shield. On paper, it was a complete season.

  Beneath the triumph, though, ran a thread of tragedy. Jimmy Thorpe, the club's young goalkeeper, was kicked during a match against Chelsea after he had gathered the ball following a backpass. He played on through the full 90 minutes. He collapsed at home afterward and died in hospital four days later. The Football Association responded by changing the rules so that players could no longer raise a foot to a goalkeeper in possession.

  The following year, Sunderland won the FA Cup, beating Preston North End 3-1 at Wembley Stadium. A supporter named Billy Morris had carried a black cat in his chest pocket as a good luck charm to the final. The charm worked. The cup came home. And a story about a black cat that lived at Roker Park in the 1900s and 1910s, fed and watered by the club itself, would eventually give the club an official nickname that 60 years of history had already made inevitable.

• 4. Bank of England Days and the Fall

  ›

  In January 1949, Sunderland paid £18,000 for Carlisle United's Ivor Broadis. The transfer was unusual in two respects: it broke records at the time, and Broadis was also Carlisle's manager, making this the first recorded instance of a player transferring himself to another club. Combined with record fees for Len Shackleton and Welsh international Trevor Ford, the spending earned Sunderland a new nickname in the press: "the Bank of England club".

  The high spending did not translate into trophies. By the late 1950s, the club had slid into financial irregularity. Found guilty of making payments to players above the maximum wage in 1957, the club was fined £5,000 and their chairman and three directors were suspended. A year later, Sunderland were relegated from the top flight for the first time in their 68-year league history.

  The absence lasted six years. Sunderland returned to Division One in 1964, then fell back to the Second Division again at the end of the decade. The pattern of ascent and collapse was becoming familiar. But before the club descended into prolonged instability, it had one more moment of glory left to arrange.

• 5. The 1973 FA Cup

  ›

  On the day of the 1973 FA Cup Final, Sunderland were a second-division club facing Don Revie's Leeds United, then one of the most powerful teams in England. Ian Porterfield scored a volley in the 30th minute. It was the only goal of the match. The trophy went north.

  Jimmy Montgomery, who holds the record for most league appearances in Sunderland's history with 527 between 1961 and 1976, was widely credited as the decisive figure. His performance in goal frustrated Leeds throughout. The victory also gave Sunderland a place in the European Cup Winners' Cup, the club's only appearance in European competition until 2026-27. They beat Vasas Budapest in the first round before losing on aggregate to Sporting of Portugal in the second.

  Since 1973, only Southampton in 1976 and West Ham United in 1980 have matched Sunderland's achievement of lifting the FA Cup from outside the top tier. Comedian Bobby Knoxall recorded a song called "Sunderland All the Way" for the final. A few years later, at the 1992 FA Cup Final, a similar record was released under the name "Ain't No Stopping Us Now" on A Love Supreme Records, featuring the first team squad. That time there was no fairy tale; Sunderland lost 2-0 to Liverpool. The label's name, at least, would carry on.

• 6. Roker Park to the Stadium of Light

  ›

  Roker Park first opened on the 10th of September 1898 with a match against Liverpool, which Sunderland won. Architect Archibald Leitch oversaw a redevelopment in 1913 that pushed capacity to 50,000. On the 8th of March 1933, a crowd of 75,118 packed in to watch an FA Cup sixth-round replay against Derby County, the highest attendance ever recorded at a Sunderland match. The stadium absorbed a bombing in 1943 that destroyed one corner of the ground; a special constable patrolling the stadium was killed.

  By the 1990s, the Taylor Report, published in January 1990 in response to the deaths of 97 Liverpool fans at Hillsborough, had recommended all major stadiums convert to all-seater designs. Roker Park shrank accordingly, became unfit for purpose, and was demolished in 1997. A housing estate now stands where it stood.

  The Stadium of Light opened in its place in Monkwearmouth, on land that had been the Monkwearmouth Colliery. Prince Andrew, Duke of York, opened the ground, and its first match was against the Dutch side Ajax. The crest on the new shirt placed the Penshaw Monument and the Wearmouth Bridge in two of its four quarters; a colliery wheel at the top acknowledged what had stood there before. A Davy lamp monument stands outside the ground, and the Durham Miners' Association presented the club with a miners banner to mark the connection. Capacity started at 42,000, then rose to 49,000 after expansion in 2000.

• 7. Supporters and Culture

  ›

  Before every kickoff at the Stadium of Light, the crowd sings a rendition of "Can't Help Falling in Love" by Elvis Presley, substituting "Sunderland" in the final line. Sergei Prokofiev's "Dance of the Knights" from his ballet Romeo and Juliet plays as the teams walk out. The walk-on song is "Ready to Go" by Republica.

  The fanzine A Love Supreme, which first appeared in 1989, has won nine awards for Fanzine of the Year and operates from premises opposite the Stadium of Light. The label that issued "Ain't No Stopping Us Now" in 1992 and Niall Quinn's Disco Pants in 1999 took its name from the fanzine. The disco pants song reached number one in the NME Indie Charts. A fan track called "Cheer Up Peter Reid", released in 1996, sold 40,000 copies and peaked at 41 in the UK charts; the proceeds went to cancer charities.

  The average attendance of 39,249 recorded across the five seasons from 2013 to 2018, according to the International Centre for Sports Studies, ranked 38th highest in world football. That figure outstripped clubs like Juventus and Porto during the same period. After relegation to League One, Sunderland broke that division's attendance record on the 26th of December 2018, drawing 46,039 fans for a match against Bradford City.

  Sunderland also maintain an unusual friendship with Dutch club Feyenoord, rooted in the 1970s and 1980s when Wearside shipbuilders relocated to Rotterdam for work. The club's rivalry with Coventry City, meanwhile, traces to a single controversial 1977 match whose result sent Sunderland down while keeping Coventry up.

• 8. Return to the Premier League

  ›

  In the 2024-25 Championship play-off final on the 24th of May 2025, Sunderland came from a goal down to beat Sheffield United 2-1, with Eliezer Mayenda leveling the tie and Tom Watson scoring a stoppage-time winner to send the Black Cats back to the Premier League after an eight-year absence.

  The route there had passed through the lowest points in the club's history. In the 2003-04 season, Sunderland were relegated from the Premier League with a then-record 15 points. They fell to the third tier in 1987, the first time in their history. The Netflix documentary series Sunderland 'Til I Die, released in 2018, filmed the club's relegation from the Championship that year. Ownership changed from Stewart Donald and Juan Sartori to Kyril Louis-Dreyfus, who completed a takeover on the 18th of February 2021 and by 2025 held 64% of the club.

  The return to the top flight brought immediate investment. As of the 13th of July 2025, the club had spent €115 million on players, each transfer exceeding the previous club record set when Asamoah Gyan was purchased for around £13 million during the Ellis Short era. Sunderland finished seventh in the 2025-26 Premier League season, their highest top-division finish since 2000-01. That result qualified them for European football for the first time in 53 years. Their biggest transfer fee paid stands at €31.5 million for Habib Diarra, purchased from Strasbourg on the 1st of July 2025.