Off the field operations

rooch 3 · Dec 2, 2025 at 9:06 AM

Nearly had me crying that, thanks for posting mate.

ab65 · Dec 2, 2025 at 9:33 AM

LD19SAFC said: ↑

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Haven't had cause to engage with the lad, but everyone you speak to about him says the same.

Cracking lad and superb at his job.

Well done Chris.

ab65 · Dec 2, 2025 at 9:34 AM

Essayyeffcee said: ↑

A great read in The Athletic

Kyril Louis-Dreyfus and Sunderland’s five-year rise: ‘The challenge for us is to break the cycle’

Michael Walker

Dec. 2nd, 2025 5:13 am GMT

Five years ago this week Sunderland’s new sporting director Kristjaan Speakman was travelling north from Birmingham to start his first day in his new job.

On the train, Speakman’s phone rang. It was the young man who had just employed him, Kyril Louis-Dreyfus. Engrossed in conversation, Speakman missed his stop. When he realised, he found himself 30 miles north of Sunderland’s Stadium of Light in Northumberland.

“I ended up getting off at Morpeth,” Speakman says. “In the driving rain, and I’d forgotten my coat.”

It was an appropriate loss of direction. Five years ago this week Sunderland were losing 1-0 at home against Wigan Athletic in League One. Wigan were bottom.

The defeat saw Sunderland slump to ninth in what was the third of four straight seasons in England’s third tier. Today on Wearside and inside the club, those days, those years, will always offer context. Whatever happens in December 2025, it is not December 2020.

December 2025 is daunting, though, and it begins on Wednesday night at champions Liverpool. Sunderland have not won at Anfield since 1983. On Saturday they then go to Manchester City, where Sunderland have not won since 1998. Following that is a local derby against Newcastle United, who won 3-0 with ease at the Stadium of Light when the teams last met, in the FA Cup in January 2024.

There is then a trip to Brighton & Hove Albion, where Sunderland have not won since 1989. Admittedly they have played there only twice since, which is due to Brighton’s travails more than the Wearsiders’.

Brighton 2025 are a different club, one place above Sunderland in the Premier League table and ahead of them in other ways. Speakman says that it would be a “huge compliment” were Sunderland to start receiving comparisons to Brighton.

Sunderland’s first game after Christmas is at home to Leeds United. So December will count and with up to seven players leaving for the Africa Cup of Nations, head coach Regis Le Bris has a squad to shuffle.

Over the past fortnight The Athletic has spoken with the three key decision-makers at the club, chairman and 64 per cent shareholder Louis-Dreyfus, director of football Florent Ghisolfi and sporting director Speakman, to assess where the club is, where it has come from and where it can go.

Saturday, an hour before Sunderland face Bournemouth in what was to be a tumultuous, atmospheric 3-2 home win and Louis-Dreyfus, 28, is in his top-floor office at the Stadium of Light sipping a double espresso and talking about, amongst other things, Granit Xhaka, the Premier League, the recent Under-17 World Cup and Accrington Stanley.

The last of those topics will surprise the most, but memories of where Sunderland have been, and recently, is a feature of those who have been inside the building these past five years.

Kyril Louis-Dreyfus watches on at the Stadium of Light

Clarifying what day Louis-Dreyfus considers to be his first, he replies, “February 18th, 2021. We signed the purchase of the club in December 2020, but there was a period of time when the EFL had to give its approval and other things had to be finalised. So February 18th was the day we took over.”

Nine days earlier this little-known son of former Marseille owner Robert Louis-Dreyfus had turned up at a Sunderland match for the first time in public. It was at Shrewsbury Town in League One and Sunderland lost 2-1. They were floundering.

“It was during Covid and that experience on its own was really sad,” Louis-Dreyfus says. “It was a difficult period in general and I’d never really watched League One before. I saw that it was a very different playing style, very physical, direct. It was a new experience and a quick lesson, the shirt and the badge will not win you games.

“We had a lot of those experiences. I remember we went to Accrington Stanley once, we drew and we were happy to draw at Accrington Stanley. You ask yourself: ‘What is the long-term plan here?’

“It was all part of the long journey back and in this industry you ask yourself questions every weekend, win or lose. There were a lot of weekends when we asked ourselves worrying questions, but there are others, when you win you ask: ‘How can we keep it going?’”

Louis-Dreyfus is not dismissive of the Accrington experiences. He is the opposite, saying how “proud” he is to have been “part of the English football ecosystem discussion in three different leagues”.

“I feel testament to the health of the pyramid that exists in England,” he says. “Throughout the country you see really engaged communities who back their local team. Some are small, some are bigger, but it’s a very vibrant ecosystem and I’m proud to have been part of it. It’s unique, I don’t see it in any other country in Europe. So many teams, so much passion, it’s very special.”

Vibrant is not a description that he and the others who acquired Sunderland would apply to the club on purchase. Relegated twice, in 2017 and 2018, even after the new owners came in there was to be more failure before success.

A League One play-off semi-final defeat by Lincoln City in 2021 came a year before a Wembley play-off final win against Wycombe Wanderers. The latter ended the third division years, but there was another play-off semi-final loss in the Championship to Luton Town in 2022 and a drop to 16th place in 2023-24. Then came this May’s promotion and euphoria.

Sunderland have been on an eight-year journey beneath the Premier League, they are just one game away from a return after last-gasp winner
“When we were looking at buying, the one thing in Sunderland we liked despite all its issues was a really big brand and legacy,” says Louis-Dreyfus. “The infrastructure was Premier League level. I don’t like the words ‘sleeping giant’ but it had such potential.

“We couldn’t come and visit because of the Covid regulations, so I didn’t arrive in Sunderland until we’d already bought the team. The first thing I thought when I got here was: ‘Ah, this exists. It’s real.’

“I hadn’t probably grasped the severity of the situation from the outside, though. Not just the double relegation, but with Covid on top, I don’t think people were fully aware of where the club was at. I still feel a lot of gratitude to the people who were in the club at that time, who never stopped caring, showing the strength and resilience to turn it around. It’s not easy to stop a sinking ship while it’s sinking.”

Two promotions on and Sunderland are sixth in the Premier League on 22 points. Ten to 15 more and they should find safe harbour.

“We’ve not achieved anything yet, other than a good start,” is the hierarchy opinion shared by Louis-Dreyfus. “At the start of the season everyone thought we were going to finish last. I went to the Premier League meeting in June and that was the consensus.”

Was that said to him directly?

“It was their honest perception and I wouldn’t blame them. If you finish fourth in the Championship, 25 points behind the top two and come up later than everyone else, it was natural for them to think, ‘Well done for getting here, enjoy it, but you will probably go back down and you might come back up and be that sort of club’.

“This was basically the challenge for us, to break the cycle of all these promoted teams who have gone straight back down, sometimes with very few points.

“We take it game by game, every win and draw gets us closer to survival, and we absolutely need to plan for all eventualities. I think if Sunderland were to go down to the Championship it would be in a completely different context than in the two or three seasons we had there previously. Equally, if we stay up, we have to keep building.”

Essential to progress this season has been the signing of Xhaka. Louis-Dreyfus is not keen to highlight his involvement, but it was instrumental “because Xhaka is from Switzerland, like I am."

“We have some mutual acquaintances, which helped to make the introduction. We were able to connect quickly and then I tried to do my very best to get him here. The first time we actually met in person was on the flight to come here.

“Xhaka knows the Premier League and he knows the club, so it was easier for him to imagine what this place could be like. It was still a big leap of faith on his side, going from a team that was playing for the Bundesliga title (Bayer Leverkusen) to one that’s newly-promoted. Full credit for him for taking a punt like that.”

Kick-off against Bournemouth approached. It’s been five eventful years. Will Louis-Dreyfus have five more here?

“If I have to make a guess, I’d be here in five years. That’s my current opinion.

“There are so many things that can happen, but every decision we make is always geared for the long term. For example, some of the new recruitment staff were looking at the Under-17 World Cup, players who are 15, 16, 17. They were asking if they should be doing this work because it will only yield a positive outcome six or seven years from now. I said: ‘Absolutely.’

“As long as I am here, and hopefully that will be for a very long time, we will focus on building the club in the long term.”

As Speakman says of his missed train stop, his first day and first week were not ideal.

“Sir Bob Murray did an incredible job, building a stadium and a training ground 25 years ago that is in many respects fit for purpose in the modern era,” Speakman says of Murray, club chairman from 1986 to 2006, who oversaw the departure from Roker Park to the newly-constructed stadium of today.

“The culture inside the building, it had lost its purpose and its meaning. I always remember walking down corridors, opening doors and boxes of junk were falling out. There was a desk of somebody who’d left six months earlier and no one had tidied it up — it was as if he was coming in tomorrow."

“It had all of the hallmarks of a failing business, a club without direction. That’s just where it was.”

Speakman was in his office at the Academy of Light, Sunderland’s training ground. In the tumbleweed years, 2017 to 2022, a broken lift there became an emblem of the club’s decline and decay.

Over five years infrastructure issues there and at the stadium have been addressed, with a new gym and new pitches installed this summer at the former and a new pitch, new dressing room and tunnel areas and hospitality upgrades at the latter. Jumbo screens inside the stadium are coming soon.

Around the ground there have been major change as well and the sense of growth extends to a coaching team that has gone from Le Bris and three assistants to a much larger corps of training ground staff under the new and influential head of performance, Shad Forsythe, who arrived in July from Borussia Dortmund having previously worked with Arsenal.

“When we did an audit on where we had skills gaps, there were several key positions, and Shad’s was one of them,” Speakman says. “There are several others around the first team. We tried to get the quality of individual with experience. We’re now a big operation in the Premier League and we wanted specific people.”

At every club the consequence of Monday-Friday decision-making, good and bad, is seen on the pitch at the weekend. The unseen has a visible impact. While it is tempting to seek landmark or transformational moments unnoticed externally, Speakman says otherwise: “I don’t think success is found in one or two big moments, it’s found in decisions that you make every day.

“To have this sort of success over five years you have to make loads of good small decisions. Along the way some of those decisions can carry more impact.

“There’s no huge secrets. You have to be lean and efficient, the staff have to be motivated with high energy and it’s the same with the team. They’re all humans, with families, anxieties, challenges, aspirations. Having a common cause is a real, powerful feeling because it connects everyone, and naturally, when a club is at its lowest point, you don’t have an argument about the overall direction, it has to be upwards.”

In these five years there have been the sideways movements and downward spikes that Louis-Dreyfus mentions.

Le Bris is the sixth head coach after Lee Johnson, Alex Neil, Tony Mowbray, Michael Beale and, in three caretaker spells, Mike Dodds. It has not been seamless or certain, and Anthony Patterson’s two enormous saves in the play-off final against Sheffield United in May should never be forgotten.

In Speakman’s words, Sunderland have “tweaked and evolved”, although the unforeseen £125million ($164m) net spend since promotion will not be considered a “tweak” by most. To date it has worked and the signing of the likes of Noah Sadiki (20), Chemsdine Talbi (20) and Habib Diarra (21) demonstrate that the club has not veered too far away from the buy-young model in place since 2020. It is just being realised with a larger budget — £20m on Sadiki rather than £150,000 on Trai Hume.

Because the recruitment on the way up was conducted within self-imposed fiscal rules, the club is confident in its PSR position, which will become SCR from the start of the 2026-27 season.

“We fully understand all the regulation,” Speakman says. “We’re fortunate that we got promoted in a positive position financially, and it’s now about if we can plot a future to utilise that benefit and be sustainable in the long-term.

“We’ll try to operate the same in the markets, try to be agile, but do so under the banner of Sunderland. We’ve always been youth-orientated and in the Premier League we’ve got one of the youngest teams, so we’re still within that feeling of what Sunderland’s been over the past five years."

“You have to have a performance level, though, it’s an unforgiving league. They all are.”

Again, the memory of losing 6-0 at Bolton Wanderers or 5-1 at Rotherham United make this forthcoming quartet of matches all the more welcome. “Everyone relishes these fixtures,” Speakman says. “Everyone at Sunderland has been yearning to play Premier League football.”

The first three of those are eye-catching, but it may be the fourth opponent, Brighton, who act as the most instructive Premier League peers.

“When we embarked on this, we looked at clubs who had been on a similar journey, the Brightons, Brentfords, Bournemouths of this world,” Speakman says. “They’ve shown really astute leadership and strategy and they’ve done the most difficult thing, which is to be consistent in your actions. It’s easy to deviate in football. There are some really good role models within the Premier League.”

Sunderland’s recruitment has brought some comparisons with Brighton. “That would be a huge compliment, because there’s a lot of respect for how those teams have operated.”

Watching all of this from afar was Ghisolfi.

Ghisolfi is a Corsican whose playing career began at Bastia in 2003 and ended at Reims 11 years later. He was a midfielder who liked a tackle, he says, but one who always had an eye beyond the immediate.

“Even when I was a player my objective was to be a sporting director,” he says.

Ghisolfi arrived on Wearside in July having held comparable positions at Lens, Nice (under INEOS) and Roma. He had known Louis-Dreyfus a little previously and had tried to recruit Le Bris as coach when at Nice. Ghisolfi’s awareness of Sunderland increased in January when Enzo Le Fee moved from Roma, initially on loan and permanently when Sunderland were promoted.

The play-off victory at Wembley was therefore career-changing and, as it turned out, not just for Le Fee. Ghisolfi was not there but his loans manager at Roma, Federico Balzaretti, was. “In with the Sunderland fans,” Ghisolfi laughs.

“He was sending me videos of the atmosphere. He’d been to another game with the fans in the away end and I asked him, ‘Eh?’ He said: ‘It’s so good, they’re crazy’. So I followed the final. For the fans it’s everything and for us it’s big energy.”

Then Ghisolfi’s phone rang and it was Louis-Dreyfus.

“Kyril called me after. I wasn’t sure, but he came to Rome. We sat up and talked until five in the morning. His clear view was that we were far from the Premier League. ‘This is the plan, can you be one of the captains for this?’”

Ghisolfi agreed with the squad analysis. In gaining promotion “Sunderland maximised the resources that they had.” It explains the subsequent influx of players.

He, too, stresses the significance of Xhaka.

“We were attractive this summer,” Ghisolfi says, “but players, agents, would say, ‘You can go down’. Xhaka, he is the only one who never said this, never, ‘It’s a big risk for me because you can go down’. He was thinking, ‘If I come, this club and this potential, no problem’.

“It is important to build this, because attractiveness is important. Players are attracted by an atmosphere and by a performance environment. I think we are showing those. Sadiki, Robin Roefs, we are the youngest team with Chelsea in the league. We are not afraid to give space to young players if they have the mentality.

“In terms of squad-building our attitude is to first improve the squad as individuals. Today when you see Dan Ballard, you understand. I can go to the market, all of them, I cannot find a Ballard. He is Sunderland — hard work, resilience, talent. A very discreet guy, but he is afraid of nothing, he is a killer, a machine. I can look in Argentina, other markets, I can’t find Ballard. So we have to value this player. We know he has to play regularly.”

Turnover has seen the head of recruitment responsible for Ballard, Stuart Harvey, depart as Sunderland pivoted towards other markets. Ghisolfi notes the concern about the seven players who may soon leave for AFCON, but his attitude is, “I’m not afraid.

“It’s an opportunity to show that we are a team, not individuals. It will be space for others to show that they are at the level, and we have to recognise that we got some African players this summer because of AFCON. Other clubs said: ‘No’.”

Ghisolfi’s role at Sunderland is not solely office-based. He is akin to a general manager at a European club, restructuring the training ground and inside the dressing room on matchdays. When Sunderland nervously led Wolves in October, at half-time Ghisolfi says he was downstairs “saying to players: ‘Connect, connect with the fans’.”

This is different for Sunderland, but not for Ghisolfi.

“When we lose the atmosphere, the players lose some energy,” he says. “Everton, Arsenal, the atmosphere was massive — boom! This common energy is the most difficult thing to find in football. When you find it, it’s so powerful.

“What I want to say is this is a living thing, it’s not here for eternity. So we have to keep pushing. If someone in the club starts to think we have done it, we are dead. I am not easy, I know, I am pushing every day, every area.”

Now seen jogging on Seaburn beach, Ghisolfi knows Sunderland’s Premier League status is not guaranteed. December 2025 could be painful, but it is not December 2020.

“When I came my first words to the staff and the team were: ‘We are only Sunderland and we are in the best league in the world’,” he says. “So we must keep our humility and respect everyone.

“At the same time I said: ‘We are Sunderland, we want to be Sunderland and we are not afraid of anyone’.

“Why would we be afraid? Why? ‘We are Sunderland. We know who we are’.”

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6852004/2025/12/02/sunderland-dreyfus-ghisolfi-speakman-exclusive/
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Thanks for posting that mate. Awesome reading.

rooch 3 · Dec 2, 2025 at 9:36 AM

What a team we have in charge now,
Compared to 5 years ago.

OldNewtown · Dec 2, 2025 at 9:47 AM

rooch 3 said: ↑

What a team we have in charge now,
Compared to 5 years ago.
Click to expand...

Chris Waters was here 5 years ago, and more, trying to do his job against a background of no money and cuts. You're right though, we have come a long way from those dark days.

LD19SAFC · Dec 2, 2025 at 10:12 AM

Man City (H) now on sale!

Blond Bombshell · Dec 2, 2025 at 10:31 AM

Let me know if anyone has a spare account with purchase history from 24/25, so I can buy 2 Leeds tickets... there are about 100 left but you need to be a non season ticket holder with 24/25 purchase history

clockstander · Dec 2, 2025 at 10:36 AM

KLD pure class, the best ever imo., hope we both live long enough to see the statue. OaU

TeamOfTalents · Dec 2, 2025 at 11:48 AM

Another article on the Athletic has us at number 1 for fan happiness. Maybe this is as good as it gets

Funny how it works though. Few years ago I was ecstatic because we looked good enough to consolidate in the championship.

Off the field operations

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