The final round of the Premier League season in May gave the Stadium of Light one of its great days.
Sunderland’s 2-1 victory over Chelsea lifted Regis Le Bris’ side to seventh in the table at the last moment, bringing European football back to Wearside for the first time in more than half a century. Within the celebrations, though, one supporter old enough to remember that 1973-74 Cup Winners’ Cup campaign approached Sunderland’s director of football Florent Ghisolfi with a furrowed brow.
“He came to me and said: ‘Is this really a good thing?’,” says a smiling Ghisolfi, the man tasked with overseeing the next steps in Sunderland’s rapid evolution. “He was saying it will be tough, but I said to enjoy it! It’s a historic situation for Sunderland. We can’t have fear. Only conviction that we will be ready.”
Sunderland supporters have seen enough false dawns to be excused that nagging concern. A club that dramatically won the Championship play-off final as recently as May 2025, ending eight arduous years out of the top flight, must now plan for the Europa League and its additional demands this coming season. At least eight more games will be added to Sunderland’s calendar when UEFA’s draw is made in Nyon on August 28.
This great, once improbable, step into the unknown has the potential to bring tests against Milan, Juventus and Bayer Leverkusen, and nights like never before at the Stadium of Light.
“I can’t wait to see it,” adds Ghisolfi, who joined Sunderland last summer after previously working for Lens, Nice and Roma. “It’s an opportunity for the club to continue to grow. We want to be the best version of ourselves, all together. We believe in the strength of the organisation, and we don’t want to talk about fear of playing in four competitions. We just want to be ready to compete.”
Florent Ghisolfi, with Jim Ratcliffe in the background, while working for Nice in May 2024 (Nicolas Tucat/AFP via Getty Images)
That messaging ran through Sunderland’s return to the Premier League last season. At least a point was taken from every opponent barring Fulham in a campaign that offered no indication of the time Sunderland had spent away from English football’s elite. The final standing of seventh has not been bettered since 1954-55. It matched the best achievements of Peter Reid’s side in 1999-00 and 2000-01.
Sunderland’s unity allowed them to capitalise on the failings of the Premier League’s European regulars to join Bournemouth as unlikely debutants in the Europa League.
Both thrived on the back of excellent recruitment and astute coaching, but now comes the challenge of backing it up. This summer will not repeat the last, where 14 new players arrived at a cost of £170million ($228m) to ruthlessly overhaul a promotion-winning squad. Belgium international defender Thomas Meunier, signed on a free transfer from Lille, is the only new face to date, but the coming weeks promise to be busy.
“For sure we need more quality, but our foundation is the same,” says Ghisolfi, speaking to The Athletic in a restaurant overlooking the River Wear at the Stadium of Light. “Our foundation is the mentality in the group, the cohesion we have in the team and the connection we have at the moment.
“The only pillar we have to protect is to keep this mentality. If someone is coming into the team now, it has to fit with what we are today.
“This summer will be different. Last summer we needed to increase the quality and numbers of players who could compete in the Premier League. It was a rush, it was a sprint. This one, because of the World Cup and our philosophy being about stability, this summer will be more of a marathon.”
And the byproduct of Sunderland’s success?
“We are more attractive now,” he adds. “This last season confirmed that Sunderland is a huge club and is able to be sustainable in the Premier League.”
Granit Xhaka leads Sunderland out at the Stadium of Light for the Chelsea match at the end of last season (George Wood/Getty Images)
Sustainability has always been a keyword for Sunderland under their owner Kyril Louis-Dreyfus, still only 28.
The purse strings were loosened 12 months ago to strengthen in the weeks that followed the Championship play-off final victory, but only after selling Jobe Bellingham to Borussia Dortmund in a package worth up to £32m and letting Tommy Watson join Brighton & Hove Albion for £10m. The previous summer it was Jack Clarke sold to Ipswich Town; the one before, Ross Stewart to Southampton. All outgoings to facilitate spending.
Sunderland’s excellent season saw several newcomers to the Premier League swell their stock, such as goalkeeper Robin Roefs, midfielder Noah Sadiki and forward Brian Brobbey. They will have eyes tracking their progress but, so far, it has only been Chelsea’s failed bid to sign Granit Xhaka, Sunderland’s captain and talisman, that has been a test of resolve.
The hope is that fringe players can be the ones sold off. Eliezer Mayenda, the young Spanish forward who scored Sunderland’s first goal of their Premier League return in a 3-0 win over West Ham United last August, has already been sold to Rennes for £21.5m. Promotion winners Dan Neil (Rangers) and Dennis Cirkin have also left on free transfers.
“The plan is that we want to keep every important player in the team, but also we will see what happens,” says Ghisolfi. “You know the football industry. We want to be a sustainable club and, on the sporting side, I am not afraid to sell a good player because I am confident we can replace him and refresh the team.”
European qualification, though, brings its own impact. UEFA’s squad cost ratio (SCR) limits clubs to spending 70 per cent of their revenue on wages, transfers and agents’ fees. The Premier League adopts the same finance control framework this season, but clubs not in European competitions will instead work to an 85 per cent cap.
Tom Burwell, Sunderland’s chief executive, is alongside Ghisolfi in planning the next steps. “We recognise the challenges that two forms of financial regulation bring so we need to be astute,” he says.
“The reality is that we have to work to UEFA rules and that’s new to us this season. I come back to the fact we’re built on really strong foundations, and we’ll make decisions from a position of strength. We do have headroom to spend this summer.”
The world in which Sunderland operate now is very different to that upon Louis-Dreyfus’ arrival in February 2021. They were League One’s underachievers, struggling to shift the decay that had taken hold with back-to-back relegations.
Turnover was just £25m in Louis-Dreyfus’ first full season at the club (2021-22) but that has increased eight-fold, with a return to the Premier League bringing in more than £200m. It has been forecast that £168m came in prize money alone.
Sunderland owner, Kyril Louis-Dreyfus (Andy Buchanan/AFP via Getty Images)
It has made Sunderland a more attractive proposition for investment and brought noises of a possible sale of the shares owned by Louis-Dreyfus (64 per cent) and Uruguayan businessman Juan Sartori (36 per cent).
“There’s probably two lenses we look at this through,” says Burwell. “From a day-to-day, Flo and I’s alignment with Kyril is as definitive as it’s always been. Kyril is a hands-on, pretty inspirational owner who has a really clear vision for where this football club is going. He’s put people in place who can help him do so. He’s also shown a mid-term commitment to this by investing again through a capital investment programme this summer.
“We’re not naive enough not to recognise that the Premier League is the No 1 league in the world and there is a scarcity to the assets that sit within that. We’ve seen rumours around Crystal Palace and clubs will always be spoken about in that nature.
“With that, people knock on our door. But what I can do is speak of the reality of where that’s playing out and there’s a complete commitment from the ownership and board to continue on chapter two with plenty of work still ahead of us.”
Regis Le Bris led Sunderland back to the Premier League and, now, to UEFA competition (Andy Buchanan/AFP via Getty Images)
Sunderland’s attempt to broaden its bottom lines takes them across the Atlantic on Wednesday for a three-game tour of the United States. Liverpool will be their first opponents on Saturday in Nashville, where they will hold fan events, a business breakfast and coaching clinics.
There will also be games against Leeds United at the Sports Illustrated Stadium in New Jersey, and against Wrexham in Chester, Pennsylvania. The last of those games has been dubbed the “documentary derby” internally.
“We have to recognise that there’s only so much value you can create within the 30-mile radius of the Stadium of Light,” says Burwell. “You can’t continually go back to that same well.
“What we have here is an incredibly unique story. There are not 20 unique stories in the Premier League, so we have to be relevant nationally and internationally, and those things can only be created if we get it right locally. Retaining that deep connection we have with our fanbase locally will give us the opportunity to monetise globally.
“The U.S. tour is an incredibly exciting opportunity. We’re able to do it in the right way in the U.S. There are commercial opportunities for sure, but it’s also about having the best preparations for another season in the Premier League.”
Growth is a buzzword for Sunderland, a club that has looked in a hurry over the last 12 months. A season-ticket waiting list now stands at 15,000 supporters and hospitality areas are also heavily oversubscribed. One solution would be a relatively simple expansion of the southern end of the Stadium of Light to mirror the height of the west and north. The latter was extended to meet demand back in 2000 after Sunderland’s home had been opened at an initial capacity of 42,000.
“We are exploring options but we have to be a 365-days-a-year operation and ensure the Stadium of Light can drive people into the footprint all year round,” says Burwell.
“We would love to (extend) but if we did it on the south or the east stands, the cost would be circa £150m for 5,000-8,000 new seats. Is that the best use of £150m when trying to commercialise this particular building?”
Sunderland’s immediate priorities are on growth of a different kind. European football is the next frontier ahead.
