Sunderland are back in Europe, and they marked the occasion with a win. Enzo Le Fée’s 66th minute penalty settled a tense opening night in the Europa League league phase, sending AZ Alkmaar home empty handed and giving Régis Le Bris’s side the perfect start to a campaign that, for this football club, is about far more than the football itself.
A crowd that had waited 53 years for this got its reward. Sunderland’s last competitive European fixture came in the 1973-74 European Cup Winners’ Cup, long before the Stadium of Light was even built, which made this the club’s first ever continental night at their current home. For long spells on Wednesday it looked as though history alone would have to be the story. AZ Alkmaar, unbeaten and full of confidence heading into matchday one, defended stubbornly and gave Sunderland precious little space in behind. It took a spot kick, converted with the composure Le Fée has shown from twelve yards before, to break the deadlock and spare the hosts a frustrating draw on a night that deserved a goal.
A wait that stretched back to 1973
To understand why this fixture carried such weight, you have to go back to a team of Second Division underdogs. Sunderland’s only previous European adventure came after Bob Stokoe’s side shocked the football world by beating Don Revie’s Leeds United in the 1973 FA Cup final, one of the great upsets in the competition’s history. That victory carried them into the Cup Winners’ Cup the following season, where they saw off Vasas Budapest before running into Sporting Lisbon, going out narrowly to the Portuguese side and bringing that brief continental adventure to a close.
Nobody at Roker Park that season could have known it would be more than half a century before the club played in Europe again. Relegations, financial turmoil and years spent outside the top flight followed, and there were long stretches when a return to European football looked like nothing more than nostalgia. Wednesday night put that right, and it did so in front of a Stadium of Light crowd that had grown up hearing about 1973 rather than living through anything comparable themselves.
From League One to the Europa League
What makes the story remarkable is how recently Sunderland were nowhere near this level at all. As recently as the 2021-22 season they were playing League One football, grinding out promotion via the play offs after years stuck in the third tier following relegation from the Championship. The rise since has been rapid rather than gradual. Kyril Louis-Dreyfus’s ownership steadied the club, the recruitment model built around data and sensible signings started to pay off, and by May 2025 Sunderland were back in the Premier League after beating Sheffield United in the Championship play off final at Wembley.
Even promotion did not guarantee anything close to what has followed. Plenty of newly promoted sides spend their return season fighting relegation. Instead, under Le Bris, Sunderland finished seventh in the Premier League last term, a position that secured qualification for this season’s Europa League and made Wednesday night possible. Going from League One to European football inside four seasons is the kind of trajectory that simply does not happen very often in English football, and it is worth pausing on that before getting swept up in league phase permutations.
Xhaka’s final dream and a captain leading the way
Granit Xhaka has been central to Sunderland’s rise since arriving from Bayer Leverkusen, and before kick off the captain made no secret of what this competition means to him personally. “I’ve twice been in the Europa League final, lost twice in the final, so for me it’s a big dream to get another final and to get it with this football club,” he said in the build up, having previously fallen short with both Arsenal and Leverkusen. He had also called for the Stadium of Light to be “on fire” for the visit of the Dutch side, and the atmosphere in the build up suggested supporters were only too happy to oblige.
Régis Le Bris, too, had spoken of his pride at leading the club back into continental competition, describing it as evidence of “the momentum of the club” rather than a happy accident. Results like this one, ground out rather than swept aside, are exactly the sort Le Bris will want his side learning to get through as the league phase continues. AZ Alkmaar arrived unbeaten in their domestic league and will have taken some encouragement from how well they limited Sunderland for long periods, even if they leave the North East without a point.
What it means going forward
One win from one game will not define Sunderland’s European campaign, but it sends the right message after a mixed start to their Premier League season. It also matters symbolically in a way league form alone cannot capture. Wednesday was proof that the club’s rebuild has produced something durable rather than a one season fluke, and it gave a generation of Sunderland supporters their first taste of a European night at their own stadium.
There will be sterner tests to come in this league phase, and Le Bris knows better than most that a team still finding its feet in the Premier League cannot afford to lose sight of domestic form while chasing continental adventure. For now, though, this was a night to enjoy. Fifty three years is a long time to wait for anything, and Sunderland marked the end of that wait with three points, a clean sheet, and a captain already talking about finals.
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