Sunderland ‘Til I Die is a sports horror story you can’t look away from

A major way mainstream American sports differ from English soccer is the idea of relegation and promotion, an idea that comes to the fore in Sunderland ‘Til I Die.

A team like Barcelona, having achieved success in the top division of Spain, garnered over €840 million in revenue, according to Deloitte Sports Business Group. But other teams, after finishing at or near the bottom of their respective division, are sent down to a lower division.

Sunderland, the soccer team that is the subject of Netflix’s Sunderland ‘Til I Die, is definitely not Barcelona, and isn’t even a team on the cusp of making the Premier League. Instead, the documentary follows a team that has recently been hurt by relegation, rather than a beneficiary of promotion.

In English soccer, staying up in the Premier League, the top division, is crucial. Deloitte reported that a promotion to the Premier League this season would likely generate at least £170 million in revenue — which translates to about $211 million in US dollars.

The team was relegated from the Premier League to the Championship. Season one of the series focuses on Sunderland’s 2017-18 stint in the Championship, where the team falls apart and is relegated once again, this time to League One, the third-best league in England.

Sunderland ‘Til I Die is a documentary that shows a fan base constantly devastated by its soccer team, a club that is often poorly ran and has its share of bad luck on the field.

This isn’t the kind of series that does public relations work for the club or forces the viewer to hear athletes and coaches spout off every cliché in the book. Because of that, it captures a very real look at a very big part of sports: losing.

In season two, Sunderland is now under new ownership after the previous owner, Ellis Short — following the two consecutive relegations — sold the team to a consortium led by Stewart Donald. The team also appointed a new manager in Jack Ross.

"“The football club being sustainable is integral to the happiness of the entire city,” then-Sunderland club executive Charlie Methven said in episode one of the newest season. “This is a meaningful, valuable. job. This is what stops people crying in church.”"

That’s to give you an idea of the stakes at play for Sunderland, which needed improvement performance-wise and in the team’s finances.

Even though Sunderland ‘Til I Die has some lows in season two, it is a ray of sunshine compared to season one. Some of it is because the team is now in League One, which is tough from a revenue standpoint, but it also means Sunderland competes in an easier league on the field.

The team’s opener featured a thrilling 2-1 comeback victory. Sunderland kept the points coming, including a 1-0 victory on Boxing Day in front of a crowd bigger than any other EFL game in 2018-19, according to BBC.

Throughout the season, Sunderland striker Josh Maja scored goals at a pretty high clip, finishing with 15 in total, which might have given Sunderland hope that it had found its striker of the future.

But Maja ended up leaving the club at the transfer window, going to Bordeaux, a team in the top division of France, for a fee of £1.5 million (or about $1.87 million USD).

Sunderland’s answer for Maja’s departure was Wigan striker Will Grigg, who’s famously the subject of “Will Grigg’s on fire,” a song created by a Wigan supporter, sung to the tune of “Freed from Desire.”

Grigg came to Sunderland for £3 million (roughly $3.74 mil USD)., the biggest signing in the history of England’s third division. He scored a less-than-stellar four goals in 18 appearances for Sunderland in League One that season.

Sunderland came in fifth place at the end of the League One regular season, which was the team’s worst finish in that low of a league in its 140-year history.

But Grigg and others kept the pace well enough after Maja left to make it to the League One playoffs. The team didn’t finish high enough to earn promotion through the regular season alone, but if Sunderland made it to the playoff final and won, it still had a chance to secure a successful season.

“It’ll be such a shame after all the work that’s gone into this year, if it’s soured at the end,” Sunderland managing director Tony Davison said.

Sunderland defeated Portsmouth and made it to the finals of the League One playoffs vs. Charlton Athletic. The winner of that game moves on to the Championship, the second-best division in England and the one that Sunderland was in before getting relegated.

Sunderland was a good second half away from earning a promotion, and getting closer to becoming a successful, flourishing club again. However, the team lost 2-1 to Charlton Athletic on a goal scored in the 94th-minute, dashing those hopes in one match.

What has happened since that match? Sunderland fired its manager after a slow start to the 2019-20 season, a decision that is much more common in English soccer than in most American sports.

Ross came so close to a trophy that would have earned his team a promotion, but that didn’t even get him job security through the rest of the next season. That’s how it goes a lot of times in soccer, and that’s how it goes a lot of times for Sunderland.

With the way the League One table looked before the coronavirus pandemic stopped matches, Sunderland was in seventh place, which is not good enough to even qualify for the League One Playoffs.

To make matters worse, Donald is looking to sell the club already, after buying it in 2018. He apparently wants to keep a stake in the team, though.

Here’s to hoping there’s a season three of Sunderland ‘Til I Die. In the meantime, you can binge Sunderland ‘Til I Die seasons 1 & 2 on Netflix.