Xhaka granite in Sunderland: what you need to know about its new club

Then arrives a new owner (we will come back to it) and a first climb, in 2022. Redemption is underway. It will be completed last season: under the direction of the French coach Régis Le Bris and despite the youngest workforce in the championship, Sunderland climbs in 4th place, before beating Coventry and Sheffield in the play-off. The loop is completed.

Created in 1888, the English championship is the oldest in the world. Sunderland won it in 1892. That is to say if the club, a city holder of a city which was a bastion of the naval industry, has in history. Still champion in 1893, 1895, 1902, 1913 and 1936, he remained the most titled institution in the country – equally with Aston Villa – until the 1950s and the advent of Arsenal. After which the Black Cats garnished their trophy cabinet with two Cups from England, raised in 1937 and 1973.

Behind, it’s nothingness. And there is no question of attributing the fault of any Poulidor syndrome: since the 1954-1955 edition completed in 4th place, they have never done better than 7th in the Premier League (in 2000 and 2001). The European Cup? Nothing to put in the tooth, with the exception of a participation in the former European Cup of the Cup winners in 1973-1974, shortened by an elimination in the 1st round against the modest Hungarians of Vasas Budapest without having scored the slightest goal.

The revival of Sunderland coincides with the arrival at the helm of a certain Kyril Louis-Dreyfus, in February 2021. The son of Robert Louis-Dreyfus-former Franco-Swiss owner of Olympique de Marseille between 1996 and 2009-became the youngest club boss in the history of English football, at just 23 years old. Money is doing a lot – his fortune is estimated at 2 billion pounds sterling according to the magazine “Bilan” – but this is not the only explanation. The young Zurich businessman is above all a crazy football. “He has an absolute passion,” said him to “the team” Vincent Labrune, his mother’s right -hand man Margarita before setting up at the head of OM from 2011 to 2016.

After the sale of the Marseille club – of which he remained a fervent supporter – in Frank McCourt in 2016, Kyril Louis -Dreyfus had promised to move away from football, “a rotten business”, he assured. “But Sunderland is a special project,” he told “the team”: “The fervor of people recalls that of Marseille”. Among the Black Cats, “KLD” applied an all -to -ostentatious strategy, based on the recruitment of young talents. “There has never been a question of a rich family who throws money into a football club. It was always a question of building something carefully, to make it grow organically and to try to improve, “lit” The Athletic “Jim Rodwell, ex-director of Sunderland until the takeover of Kyril Louis-Dreyfus, adding:” The way he made the club grow is exactly the one he had described before he was the owner “.

Granit Xhaka will learn to hate Fabian Schär, with whom he has long evolved as a Swiss team. And for good reason: the Saint-Gallois defender defends the colors of Newcastle, Rival Honni de Sunderland. Between these two cities separated by less than 20 km, the fracture dates back to the English civil war, in the heart of the 17th century. Newcastle then supported the king, Charles I, while Sunderland had put himself on the side of the opponents of the Parliament.

As always, this split has extended in football, without any club clearly seizing regional supremacy. If Sunderland has more champion titles to his credit (6 against 4), Newcastle won more cuts (6 Cups from England, against 2, and the League Cup won in March) and has also occurred on the European scene. Since their first confrontation in the official match, in 1888, the record is almost perfect: Newcastle led a small victory (54 against 53 in favor of Sunderland, for 50 dummies).

Before Kyril Louis-Dreyfus, Switzerland occupied only a microscopic place in the long history of Sunderland. There are only two players to have settled their suitcases there. The first, Bernt Haas, played 28 games with residents of the Stadium of Light – the 11th largest stadium in England, with its 48,000 places – during the 2001-2002 season. Coming from Grasshopper, where he won four titles of champion of Switzerland, the former right side to the 36 selections in the national team did not make old bones in northeast England, leaving in the summer of 2002.

Cabral succeeded in the “feat” to achieve an even more anecdotal passage. The Vaudois midfielder of Cap-Verdean origin, passed by Lausanne-Sport, Basel and FC Zurich, appeared only twice in the Black Cats jersey, in 2013. As if being dismissed by his coaches was not enough, he was the subject of a rape accusation. Case from which he emerged bleached. We wish Granit Xhaka a better sporting success.