Jobe Bellingham and play-off hero leaving but no spoiling Sunderland party

Times

25-05-2025

At the bottom of the northwest ramp of Wembley Stadium, hidden well away from the public eye, a team bus with a giant black cat and the prophetic words 'Til The End' painted on its side sat patiently, engine running, waiting.
It was quarter-to-eight on Saturday night and the Sky Bet Championship play-off squad it had dropped off earlier in the day were climbing back up its steps as Premier League players. They carried with them crates of ale, large magnums of champagne and absolute joy.
The spectacle of a celebration in front of 36,500 Sunderland supporters had been replaced with something far more intimate — hugs with friends after achieving something very special.
Two elements stood out even amid the delirium and the huge, booming party-box speaker that Trai Hume carried with Oasis's Wonderwall blasting out; Sunderland collectively looked both exhausted and surprised to have reached the Premier League.
Kristjaan Speakman, the director of football who had masterminded promotion with a squad that cost only £17.5million, wore the tracksuit top of Jobe Bellingham, with the player's first name emblazoned on the back. He looked almost euphoric. Régis Le Bris, the Sunderland head coach, was back in his preferred tracksuit, having created a piece of history in a suit.
'Probably I spend time in France because I stay 11 months here without moving,' he said of his summer plans. 'So let's spend time with family and friends, relax, and enjoy and be prepared for the next season.'
He looked shattered.
It was 48 hours before the play-off final against Sheffield United that ended with another dramatic, late Sunderland winning goal — this time through Tommy Watson, now no longer even a Sunderland player — that Le Bris said: 'When you have your opportunity, it is important to catch it.' It sounded so much more poetic in a French accent, profound even.
It was just that having caught their butterfly in such dramatic and unexpected fashion — Sunderland finished 16th in 2023-24 — there was no collective desire to open up their hands and look at what they had actually got hold of.
If it was a day for footballing romantics — the youngest team in the division had just defeated a team with parachute payments. The maths and planning could wait, although they will not wait for long.
One of Le Bris' favoured and repeated phrases is about the connections inside his team and inside the club. He reiterated that when asked if the club is ready for the Premier League. 'I think Sunderland is still building their structure and we have to make another step, an important step, to prepare the squad for the Premier League but we will see in a few days,' he said.
Can the club make the step, he was asked.
'I hope so, I hope so,' the 49-year-old manager said. 'We need to remember that the connection between players is more important than the talent of one player. Sometimes we forget it's a collective sport and a collective effort. The main point is the way we work together.'
Yet despite the tiredness and the desire to party as they descended from that same team bus at the Renaissance Hotel in St Pancras with it still light on Saturday evening, the change had already started.
Enzo Le Fée is a Sunderland player in all but announcement, his transfer having been triggered in the immediacy of promotion. The £20million fee — which is what the 25-year-old French midfielder would cost if all add-ons are triggered — is more the rest of the squad put together cost. The most Sunderland had previously spent on a player since their relegation from the Premier league in 2016-17 was the £3million they paid for Will Grigg at the start of 2019.
So, regardless of a collective desire to enjoy the moment, the change had started. Watson, the 19-year-old local lad jeered in April and cheered in May, had become a Brighton & Hove Albion player in a deal agreed nearly two months ago for £10million. One out and one in, and that will be the way once the plan to try to keep Sunderland in the Premier League is finalised and activated.
The 'Jobe' tracksuit worn by Speakman felt significant too. Speakman has been at the heart of both Bellingham careers, having previously worked as the academy manager at Birmingham City from 2011 when Jude was making his way.
It is not thought that promotion will alter the career plan of the 19-year-old Jobe, with Borussia Dortmund still likely to be his new home when Sunderland kick off as a Premier League club in less than 12 weeks' time.
'I take a lot of pride in saying that I am one of the players who has helped this great club get back to where it belongs,' he said.
It would be out of kilter with everything Sunderland have done since Kyril Louis-Dreyfus became the majority owner in May 2023 to expect a transfer window spree to match that of Southampton last summer, who also went up via the play-offs and had a gross spend of £103million, and still ended up relegated earlier in the season than any other club previously in the history of the Premier League, with seven games remaining.
Anthony Patterson, the Sunderland goalkeeper who made a crucial save from Andre Brooks when Sheffield United had already taken the lead through Tyrese Campbell's first-half goal, believes the club can end the trend of the previous six clubs promoted from the Championship over the past two seasons, who were all immediately relegated.
'The quality you saw out there was really good,' Patterson, 25, said. 'We have unreal amounts of quality to see what we can do in the Premier League and the togetherness we have as a group is incredible.
'It's going to be an incredible season. We'll be coming up against the likes of Chelsea, Liverpool, Man U and Man City. It will be surreal.'
It felt surreal all right, after the equaliser from Eliezer Mayenda and the 95th-minute winner from Watson, as grinning players stepped on to a team bus blasting with music.
''Til the End' has proved a marketing masterstroke, but now it is about a beginning, one of the biggest in Sunderland's history.