By the time Elvis Presley's “Can't Help Falling in Love” was blasting out of the speakers at London's Wembley Stadium in 1973, it had enjoyed a revival of sorts as Presley's comeback show number from 1968 onwards. I was already enjoying it. This year's FA Cup final featuring Sunderland Association Football Club, Sunderland Association Football Club is an underdog team that some might say doesn't need to be there and certainly doesn't need to win. The team faced Leeds United, one of the most dominant teams in the game and winners of the previous season's tournament. So it was no surprise that Sunderland fans were overwhelmed with pride when Elvis' voice blared from the stadium's speakers as the team lined up and prepared to take the field. They sang together in full voice until a rolling, infectious chorus echoed through the arena. By the end of the game, their pride had turned to ecstasy. Sunderland won 1-0. After the victory, Elvis' song was renamed by Sunderland supporters as “The Wise Men Say'', based on the song's opening line, and became a kind of team anthem. As well as commemorating Sunderland's luckiest moments, it seemed to suggest that the bad old days are behind us. Good things lie ahead, and an era of wins and championships awaits. Unfortunately, that wasn't to be the case. The 1973 FA Cup was the club's last major trophy for the next 50 years.
There is a scene in the Netflix series “Sunderland 'Til I Die,'' which ended its third and final season last month, that left a lasting impression on me. It's 2021 and Sunderland will once again be playing in his third-tier league (now known as League One) and will be re-promoted after experiencing a number of dramatic changes in fortunes. They will face a high-stakes playoff game that will decide the outcome. To the second division league. This scene appears in the Season 2 finale, at the end of the play-off game against Charlton Athletic. In the first half of the match, Sunderland started with a 1-0 lead, but even if Sunderland did not yet know what kind of luck they had, it was with such a lead that you could see that it would not last long. did. had. Viewers watch the remaining minutes of the match agonizingly tick by. It happens at the same time as Sunderland lose crucial possession and Charlton equalize the score at 1-1. The ball ricocheted loosely in the box before being cleared away by the Charlton striker. There was almost no time left. clock. There is no way for Sunderland to aim for an equaliser.
This alone is devastating enough. But there is a sequence within the scene that, for me, acts as a theme for both fandom and inevitable heartbreak. A montage of Sunderland players collapsing on the pitch, with confetti raining down all around them. A father in the stands hugged his crying son and said with painful clarity: “We've been here before, haven't we?'' As the stadium emptied, a teary-eyed woman, seemingly torn between anger, sadness and disbelief, slung a Sunderland AFC flag over her shoulder. It remains. she asks, looking at her partner. “Why don't we celebrate?” That's why I never have we? “
The man shrugs silently. There's no better way to think about such questions until someday, when a trophy is hoisted to you and your team.
“Sunderland Till I Die” has little in common with the traditional modern sports documentary series that are flooding streaming platforms these days. It's not as preoccupied with the day-to-day behind-the-scenes action as, say, Amazon's All or Nothing. Each season, from the NFL to English football, we use microphones to follow teams throughout the season. – Close-up shots during the match and a disembodied voice as a narrator. This is different from “Last Chance U,” another Netflix series that follows junior college basketball and football programs that, as the title suggests, offers one last shot at young players at risk of flameout. The coaches are often the main attraction on these shows, and the game is filtered through their many eccentricities (to say the least). “Sunderland,” by contrast, is first and foremost a study of place, and little more than a study of sport. Yes, of course, the show spends a lot of time on the players and the games themselves (and in its second season, it probably spends a little too much time on front office activities). But it is at its best as a portrait of the people of the town, the people whose identity is tied to a team that is now 145 years old and embedded in Sunderland's geography. Old churches, shipyards, and the river that bisects the city.
Home is a place chosen for you first of all. At some point, you may choose to accept all the joys and disappointments and just go back to where you were, hoping that you'll eventually break even. 'Sunderland' is based on an understanding of this calculation and further claims that Sunderland Football Club plays no role in the balance. The series begins in the 2017-18 season, when Sunderland were relegated after ten years in Tier 1 of the Premier League, but the club's history as a whole has been marked by some spectacular failures. In the late 1950s, the team was embroiled in a financial scandal when it was discovered that they were paying their players more than the agreed-upon maximum wage. The following year, they were relegated to the second division for the first time amid fines and suspensions. The team's lowest result came in 1987, just two years after their first appearance in the League Cup final, when they dropped to the Third Division. They returned to the Premiership in 1990 after their opponents in the play-off final were coincidentally found guilty and disqualified for a financial scandal, but they only stayed for one season and were relegated again after a disastrous defeat in the final. . The final day of the 1990-91 season. As the series shows, this instability has far-reaching consequences beyond crushing fans' hopes. When teams are relegated, budgets are strained. Jobs will be lost. Teams cannot pursue the quality of players that they can get in the Premier League. Failing teams have to fight to get back on their feet, and they have to do so with fewer resources, putting a strain on team management, staff, players, and the broader community.
Placing your hopes on something or someone with a track record of disappointing you may seem like the very definition of insanity. However, the psychology of sports fans follows a different logic, especially for fans who feel a deep affinity for a place. One season ends and there is a period of mourning, but each new season gives us a blank slate onto which we can project our dreams. So the Netflix series sees fans rummaging through memorabilia from decades ago at Sunderland in their newly downsized flats. We explain in a hushed voice how he once had more memorabilia but sold some just to make a little money to go to more games. I listened to it. We follow a taxi driver who never misses a home game and a man who delivers two large cups of tea from McDonald's before every game, one for himself and one for his longtime friend and fellow fan. .
Your heart may break for these poor souls, or it may break with them. But what happened to me over the three seasons of the show was that I found myself rethinking my own form of dedication. The question in my mind is How can people love their sports teams so much?? to Even considering everything I know, what would I sacrifice for and keep coming back to?Perhaps I'm too much of an obsessive romantic, but this is a part of the human condition that I gravitate toward, empathize with, and almost envy when it's not in my immediate understanding.? Even if it is for whatever joy it may precede.
The third and final season of 'Sunderland' will be just three episodes long and takes place midway through the 2021-22 season, with the team near the top of the Third Division standings as they aim for promotion to the Second Division. There are somewhat hastily drawn portraits that introduce familiar players and introduce new ones. Defenseman Linden Gooch is on the expiration of his long-term contract, which he has had with the team since he was a teenager. A new forward named Ross Stewart was plucked from a largely unknown Scottish side and became Sunderland's top scorer and fan favorite. (When he's doing well on the field, fans sing “Ross Stewart is the best on Earth” to Belinda Carlyle's “Heaven Is a Place on Earth.”) 2018 is in the midst of a downturn. He has had a tough season, but is working toward a comeback despite sustaining injuries. The episode focuses on the final stages of the season, with Sunderland slipping, rising and then slipping again as they need to finish in the top two in the league to secure immediate promotion.
Sunderland finished fifth and qualified for the league play-offs. And the team were back at Wembley where they were when they were champions in 1973. Sunderland faced Wycombe Wanderers and took a further 1-0 lead early on. (They say 2-0 leads are the most dangerous in this sport, but I'd wager his early 1-0 lead was the most dire for spectators and participants alike.) ) With 80 minutes left in the game, the teams are off to the races. Against time and its whole messy history. The beauty of sports documentaries is how they slow everything down and inflate the intensity with every touch of the ball in a way that I didn't when I was watching the same Sunderland game in real time. There is something you can do. The show offers another montage as Stewart scores his second goal into the left corner of the goal with 11 minutes remaining, making the score 2-0 and all but ensuring Sunderland victory and promotion. In the past, they were completely unable to do that, as opposed to times when they couldn't do that.
Late last fall, I was at Lower.com Field in my hometown of Columbus, Ohio. That's because the Columbus Crew was participating in the Major League Soccer finals (fifth in total). (The team won a game played in a mostly empty stadium in 2020.) The Crew has a new coach, and one of their star players left the team midway through to play in Saudi Arabia. . They weren't even the top-ranked team in the state, but they did it in another MLS Cup final after an impressive run through a fraught playoff run. They played against the Los Angeles Football Club and scored two goals in the beginning of the game, but conceded in the second half, making the score 2-1 with about 25 minutes remaining. At that point, I couldn't bear to watch it anymore. I turned away from the field, picked up the pace, and went to the top of the stands to watch from a distance. As if that distance increases your ability to endure what you are receiving. It's funny when I look back on it now, but it's no more ridiculous or absurd than many other things I've done out of love or feelings close to love.
After the Crew won and the celebrations on the pitch died down, people in the stands linked arms, following local custom. Through a combination of respect and laziness, American soccer borrowed many chants from England. “Can't Help Falling in Love” played from the speakers, and fans sang along, replacing the last “you” in the chorus with “Crew.” Note that this is not the case with Elvis songs. only It's not about love in the simple sense of the word, it's about surrender, about having no choice but to go to a place and stay faithfully there. What concerns me is not the replacement of 'Crew', but the first part that Sunderland and Crewe fans share. The line goes, “Smart people say/Only fools rush in.” Only a fool would submit himself to something so completely out of his control. Again, I was a fool for much less. ♦
