The richest game in football
Two teams have a chance to win promotion to the Premier League. Neither has, historically, been good at doing that. PLUS: The Maple Leafs do stuff!
Depending on the time of day you open this newsletter on Saturday, a bunch of English football fans will either be nervous with anticipation or divided between elated and distraught.
Sheffield United plays Sunderland in the Championship play-off final at London’s Wembley Stadium at 3pm local time, 10am for those of us in the Eastern time zone.
The winner gets the final promotion spot to the Premier League, worth an estimated $300-million, which is why they call it the richest football match in the world.
As if that wasn’t enough in terms of stakes, Sheffield United and Sunderland happen to have terrible playoff records. United is 0-for-9 in playoff attempts. Sunderland has one successful playoff campaign in eight tries. (Playoff success, in this case, meaning winning the semi-finals and then the final.) These are fan bases that are fairly well conditioned to having their hearts broken during an afternoon in the English capital in late May. The movable object meets the resistible force.
Sheffield United are big favourites, and for good reason. They were in the Premier League last season and spent most of this season in the automatic promotion spots of the Championship — the top two avoid the playoff — before a sag at the end saw them lose out to Leeds United and Burnley. Teams that are relegated from the Premier League, as Sheffield United was last season, still receive millions of dollars of “parachute payments” — money that allows them to avoid having to cut expenses drastically once the Premier League cash spigot has been turned off. United, like Burnley, used that money to maintain a strong squad that was capable of a promotion push. Luton Town, the third team relegated from the Premier League last season, used the parachute payments to … get relegated again. Whoops.
Luton did what is sometimes known as “pulling a Sunderland.” That club was somewhat famously featured in a Netflix documentary that debuted in 2018. It was brilliant, a master of the genre, and spawned countless less-interesting imitators, largely because Sunderland ‘Til I Die documented a couple of train-wreck seasons. Sunderland had been relegated from the Premier League in 2017, and the documentary was intended to follow the rise back up to the top flight (and goose interest in the team for a possible sale). Instead, Sunderland was relegated again to the third tier, where they were mired for several more seasons, despite being one of England’s bigger clubs, with a stadium that seats close to 50,000. That documentary, which lasted two seasons, plus an epilogue of sorts that came out after Sunderland finally made it back to the Championship, was also the inspiration behind the purchase of Wrexham AFC by two Hollywood actors.
It’s now been eight full seasons since Sunderland was in the Premier League, but it’s also not entirely clear that they should want to return there. Here is, for example, the bottom end of the PL table for this current season, which ends on Sunday:
Those three teams at the bottom, all of which are long since relegated, were the same teams that came up from the Championship last May.
Here is the bottom of the PL table from the 2023-24 season:
Yep, those bottom three teams were all in the Championship the season prior. As much as it is possible, and desirable, to make the jump from the second tier to the first tier, and get all the riches that await, it’s also a likely ticket to getting absolutely thumped in the Premier League and an immediate demotion to the Championship.
Sunderland, unlike Sheffield United, embarked several seasons ago on what might be called a sustainability project, focusing on developing young talent that could be sold at a profit, as opposed to chasing promotion with a team that was more experienced but unlikely to have resale value. They have the youngest team in the Championship, with an average age of around 23 years old. Mere puppies!
Which leaves Saturday’s playoff final with a fascinating pairing: Sheffield United, the team that definitely wants to get promoted again, and Sunderland, the team that has been off in the wilderness for the better part of a decade but might still be better off staying there.
The fans of both teams might reasonably wonder if promotion is actually something they should want. Either club would likely be slaughtered in the Premier League next season. But all the fans could be forgiven for not thinking about that. They have a day our at Wembley. They almost never win there. A seminal victory would be fun in the moment. After all, isn’t that why people become fans in the first place?
The Leafs clean house a room
The fallout from the Toronto Maple Leafs’ embarrassing Game 7 no-show against the Florida Panthers claimed the job of team president Brendan Shanahan. Mid-week, I wrote for theScore about whether new(ish) MLSE boss Keith Pelley and his boss, Edward Rogers, would be bothered enough to make change. A day later, they did. I also wrote an obit of sorts on Shanahan, who does not have a lot to show for his 11 years. I will admit that I wondered if I was being a little too harsh in writing that it wasn’t exactly clear what Shanahan spent his time doing, but then MLSE announced that they would not be hiring anyone to replace him. Point made.