STAYING UP! (?): the diary of a Sunderland fan, 2025-6 season
1——15/8 Sarajevo
2——22/8 Vienna
3——29/8 -“-
4——13/9 Drama, Greece
5——21/9 San Sebastián, Spain
6——27/9 -“-
7——4/10 Seaham, England
8——18/10 Vienna
9——25/10 -“-
10——3/11 Thessaloniki
11——8/11 Vienna
12——22/11 -“-
13——29/11 Ljubljana, Slovenia
14——3/12 -“-
15——6/12 -“-
16——14/12 Vienna
17——20/12 Sunderland
18——28/12 Fernhill Heath, England
19——1/1 Vienna
20——4/1 -“-
21——7/1 -“-
22——10/1 -“-
23——17/1 Berlin
24——24/1 Tromsø, Norway
25——2/2 Glasgow
26——7/2 Amsterdam
27——11/2 Vienna
28——15/2 between Bad Schandau and Dresden, Germany
29——22/2 Vienna
30——28/2 -“-
31——3/3 -“-
32——14/3 Thessaloniki
33——22/3 Vienna
34——13/4 Vienna
35——19/4 Vienna
36——24/4 Aosta/Geneva/Nyon (Italy/Switzerland)
37——2/5 Linz, Austria
38——9/5 Novi Sad, Serbia
39——17/5 Vienna
40——24/5 Vienna
Saturday 15th August 2025
Sunderland 3 – West Ham 0
In Sarajevo, walking up the street named Patriotske lige^^ mid-afternoon, I saw a ragged crow sitting on the wall of the dog-zone of Kemal Monteno Park. Monteno (1948-2015) was one of the most famous singers from the city, dubbed “the Bosnian Roy Orbison” and “the Bosnian Neil Diamond.” His 1976 Yugoslavian hit single “Sarajevo, ljubavi moja” (‘Sarajevo, love of mine’) endures as an anthem of the city, where he resided for the entirety of its 1992-6 siege.
It was a hot afternoon and the crow looked exhausted, his feathers askew. But when I placed a peanut (with shell) on the wall beside him, he roused himself into life, ambled over, and took it in his beak. I left him to it, presuming and hoping that the energy from the nut would give him sufficient pep to flap away into the shade and find further nourishment to keep him going.
Saturday 22nd August
Burnley 2 – Sunderland 0
In Vienna, over breakfast I continued with Hitchcock’s Lifeboat and started George Miller’s Furiosa, both on DVD. Later in the morning I continued with my reading of Joseph Conrad’s novel Victory, on a bench under the trees alongside the Prater Hauptallee. In Kate’s Cafe near Praterstern station I went online, learned the results of that day’s Japanese races which included a winning debut by the 2-year-old colt Ars Magna at Chukyo (a suburb of Nagoya). Ars Magna, sent off a 33/1 outsider, finished strongly to beat the short-priced favourite God Eye by a length. At Kate’s I also read about the death of Portuguese cinematographer Eduardo Serra (Unbreakable, Girl with a Pearl Earring, Les Bronzés, etc) aged 81.
Later that afternoon I went to the Admiral Sportsbar, on the other side of the Prater, where I bet €5 on Maranoa Charlie in the City of York Stakes at York; he started 9/1 and finished a close third, but my bet was win-only…. so I lost my money. After buying groceries at Hofer supermarket I went back to my flat, finished Lifeboat and continued with Furiosa (which I watched piecemeal, chapter by chapter.) That evening I had a pleskavica gurmanska at the good-value Serbian restaurant Sokače, near Schönbrunn u-bahn station, plus a glass of Lozova rakija. Then I walked to Das Alt pub in Hietzing where I had a glass of Ottakringer Rotes Zwickl beer. On the way back to my flat I went to Cafe Weidinger on the Gürtel, near Burggasse-Stadthalle u-bahn station, where I drank a bottle of Gösser Märzen and read Philip K Dick’s The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch.
Saturday 29th August
Sunderland 2 – Brentford 1
Mid-afternoon on an overcast Vienna day, having a ‘kleiner Schwarzer‘ (i.e. espresso) at Café Weingartner, one of the more old-school establishments in this old-school city—one where snooker, billiards and archaic card-games are as much of a draw as the coffee and food (not to be confused with the somewhat similar but slightly shabbier Café Wiedinger, half a dozen blocks away).
Weingartner lies five minutes’ walk from Westbahnhof (where earlier than day I’d arrived on a train from Linz, after two nights at the Neue Heimatfilm festival in nearby small medieval town of Freistadt), on the junction of Goldschlagstraße and Löhrgasse.
Not the busiest of intersection but every few seconds there’s a pedestrian, or a bicycle, or a food-delivery scooter. I keep half an eye on such comings and goings while I read a few chapters of Raymond Chandler’s detective novel The Little Sister (1949): violent shenanigans in a cheap and seedy rooming-house in “Bay City” (i.e. Santa Monica). A 1966 Penguin paperback, its original price was “3/6” or three shillings and sixpence.
“I examined the backs of three pictures and studied the edge of the carpet. It was tacked close to the wall and there were little pockets of dust in the depressions made by the tacks.”
Saturday 13th September
Crystal Palace 0 – Sunderland 0
Drama, a city in north-eastern Greece less than an hour’s drive from the Bulgarian border; I’m here on a jury at the 48th International Short Film Festival. Lots of gaps between duties but during the daytime it’s still a bit too hot (30°C) to wander around. At 2pm I’m sitting at a terrace café, Τουλουμπα (Toulomba) in the centre, on Agias Sofias Avenue, at the start of a small pedestrianised area. I have a cappuccino while finishing chapter 5 of Atticus Lish’s terrific 2014 novel Preparation for the Next Life, which I’m re-reading because a film based on it premiered this month at Toronto.
My table is next to a tree, which is itself next to a utilitarian kind of fountain with a stop-tap. A plaque on the top of the fountain, in Greek, mentions the name of the café and the years “1987/88.” Years of restoration, paid for by the café?
Next to the low wall around the fountain is a black plastic bucket, originally used for mayonnaise, half-full for the benefit of the city’s passing fauna.
Minutes after I sit down a large, old, brown stray gulps down mouthful after mouthful. A while after he lollops off a pigeon wanders by and eventually hops on to the edge of the bucket. The water-level is too low for the pigeon to comfortably drink, so he/she has to repeatedly bob down, pink claws clutching the edge of the bucket. After three or four low bobs, beak makes contact with water.
Most city pigeons are notably unintelligent, but this one seems to be an exception, relatively speaking. It also looks healthier than most, with clear orange irises (being from north-east England, I know that you judge the condition of a pigeon from its eyes) and all claws intact.
After several bobbing drinks, the pigeon comes to the conclusion that the effort does not justify the reward. It hops down to the pavement and down onto the tarmac at the edge of the road, where there is a small puddle whose water is dirtier than that of the bucket, but significantly more accessible.
Sunday 21st September
Sunderland 1 – Aston Villa 1
In San Sebastián, Spain (the well-heeled seaside city known as “Donostia” in the Basque language widely spoken hereabouts) for the big snazzy film festival, the “Spanish Cannes,” the Iberian peninsula’s biggest film event by a wide margin. My first full day in town, was up at 7am in the dark (it’s dark until surprisingly late this far west in this particular timezone) and saw five full-length films in total, not a single walk-out (though I was tempted):
1. (8.30am) Maspalomas, brand-new Spanish film about the travails of an elderly gay gent. Not bad.
2. (11.45am) Ungrateful Beings, Czech/Slovenian family drama which was going just fine until stumbling plot-wise within sight of finishing-line.
3. (2.15pm) Nighttime Sounds, delicate Chinese picture mainly about little girls living in a countryside town, through which I intermittently snoozed.
4. (5.45pm) Dash and Lilly, TV movie from 1999 directed by Oscar-winning actress Kathy Bates, about the long romance between writers Dashiell Hammett and Lillian Hellman (the latter the focus of this festival’s big retrospective.)
5. (8.15pm) In-I in Motion, also directed by a famous actress, in this case Juliette Binoche making a belated debut behind the camera, with a looong documentary about a dance/performance project she was involved with in the late 2000s.
And it rained, on and off, pretty much all day.
Saturday 27th September
Nottingham Forest 0 – Sunderland 1
Still in San Sebastian and today three times in the water: 10am after a run on the big ‘Concha’ beach, in up to the calves; 4pm on the surf beach at Gros, up to the knees, and in between around noon up to the thighs, again on the Concha. Hardly any waves, more a case of caressing undulations with only very occasionally anything stronger. Dug feet into the sea-bed sand, got a bit deeper when digging in heels. If standing for a few minutes stock still, among the thick, dark-red seaweed, down around my feet, a glimpse of white fish.
Saturday 4th October
Manchester United 2 – Sunderland 0
Blowing an absolute gale in Seaham (afterblasts of Storm Amy, known as Storm Detlef in Germany) as I roamed the streets trying to find the Island Social Club, in order to watch the match. Given hopelessly wrong directions by the pal I was meeting there, I ended up walking all the way to Dawdon before doubling back and eventually finding the location, within view and sight of the Sunderland-Seaham railway line. By this time I arrived at The Island (somewhat knackered and not a little pissed off) the first half was over, we were two-nil down. The “Social Club” (in fact a pub) was so packed (average age 25<) and getting served took so long, I started off with two simultaneous pints of Guinness. They vanished quickly. Found a place in view of one of the pub’s big screens to watch the second half, which proved goalless. Amazing that we went to Old Trafford in the reasonable expectation of a win; even after this defeat, we are still above them in the league. Staying up!
Saturday 18th October
Sunderland 2 – Wolverhampton Wanderers 0
Vienna: a depressingly clammy morning rain gradually faded around noon, mostly blue skies and sunshine by 2pm when I ran for 36 minutes in the Prater, mainly on Prater Hauptallee where the running-track alongside the tarmac road was carpeted with chestnuts in various states from intact, bristly pericarp to the fruit itself crushed flat. Occasional sharp crack as a heavy nut fell onto the tarmac from the tree above, rough calls of crows among the leaves. Essence of autumn / it is October in the Railroad Earth.
Saturday 25th October
Chelsea 1 – Sunderland 2
Cafe Alex is an unassuming spot less than five minutes’ walk from my flat, it’s located Stuwerstraße 47 in Vienna’s 2nd district (aka Leopoldstadt.) I’ve lived in this neighbourhood (Stuwerviertel, until around 2010 the city’s main red-light area) for a year and a half and had walked past Alex a few dozen times without ever venturing inside. This Saturday morning I rectified that oversight, around 9.30 had a plate of bacon and eggs with a cup of coffee. The waitress/owner seemed a little distracted when I asked for the bacon and eggs, as if this was an unusual order. Maybe she doesn’t have much experience with bacon; when it arrived it was shrivelled up inside the eggs, the latter garnished with dashes of paprika (I heard the waitress speaking Hungarian on the phone…) Two middle-aged blokes came in and asked for “sljiva,” a grappa-like spirit popular in ex-Yugoslavian areas. “So early in the morning?!” the waitress laughingly exclaimed. After I finished the breakfast I got out my laptop and went online, analysing the runners for the final Japanese classic of the season, the Kikuka Sho, run at Kyoto the following morning. My shortlist boiled down to Shohei, Energico*, Eri King, Giovanni and one of my favourite horses in training, the hefty and somewhat lumbering grey with the glorious name of Yamanin Bouclier.
Monday 3rd November
Sunderland 1 – Everton 1
“The result moves Sunderland up to fourth, level on points with Liverpool and just one point behind Pep Guardiola’s Man City. Who would have thought we’d be saying that after ten games?”
Even before the end of this, the tenth game of Sunderland’s 2025-6 season, new captain Granit Xhaka had pretty much cemented himself as an all-time club legend. How many little boys in Sunderland schools in 5 years time will be named (or middle-named) Granit, how many girls Granita or Xhaka? He scored his first goal for the club tonight in the home game against tricky Everton, a one-all draw which (given Sunderland’s domination in the second half) felt like two points lost rather than one point won. Leaving aside his formidable skills, what a joy it is to see Granit Xhaka play football: looks as though he’s having the time of his life out there, and maybe he is. My joint-favourite Kosovar-Swiss, dead-heating with Gjon’s Tears.
I managed to miss seeing Xhaka’s goal by mere seconds, arriving in the large Harat’s Irish pub in the busy pedestrian Ladadika area of Thessaloniki (Greece) just after the start of the second half. I’m in town for the 66th Thessaloniki International Film Festival and came to Harat’s hot-foot from the Pavlos Zannas screen at the Olympion cinema, on the main Aristoteles Square looking directly onto the waterfront (and, somewhere over there in the distance, Mount Olympus). I watched just over an hour of a 1984 Greek romantic drama, Sudden Love, partly shot in Lisbon and starring Hellenic superstar Betty Livanou (and whose title surely inspired the naming of the Luca Cumani trained filly who was four-length runner-up to easy winner Diminuendo in the 1988 Oaks). The film is now mainly of curio interest as it was set and shot not long after Greece’s 1981 accession of what was then the EEC and is now the EU; the main character falls in love with an OECD economist who is partly credited with spurring the accession. Greece’s membership of the bloc would prove quite the rollercoaster in the ensuing decades….
Sudden Love itself was so-so, the match rather more stimulating, even with a lack of commentary: instead the pub PA played various rock hits from the 60s, 70s and 80s including “Money For Nothing” by Newcastle’s Dire Straits featuring backing vocals by Sting, from Wallsend, whose supposed SAFC-fan status has long been a matter of speculation and controversy. Anyway, we are now joint-sixth to be relegated in the bookies’ odds, alongside Fulham, at around 8/1. In other words, (probably) ασφαλές σαν γάλα / asfalés san gála / safe as milk.
Saturday 8th November
Sunderland 2 – Arsenal 2
First full day back in Vienna after 5 nights in Thessaloniki, rather colder here, definitely November, grey and dampish, I went down to the banks of the Danube to get online at the massive Hilton Hotel, noonish to 3pm, looked out of the window from time to time, saw a narrow clump of trees across the water on the Danube Island, intermittently blazing into a dirty golden light when the sun hit them, not often.
Saturday 22nd November
Fulham 1 – Sunderland 0
My first view of One Battle After Another was on a pokey digital screen in a Sunderland multiplex with a handful of folks. Second was this afternoon, on 70mm, in my favourite cinema (the Gartenbaukino Vienna) with nearly all of the 736 pews occupied. and I liked it much better! Found myself fonder of the screenplay’s faults, which start multiplying in the second half. A charitable interpretation: this replicates the big-hearted amateurishness of The French 75 rather than the soulless professionalism of The Christmas Adventurers and their far-right pals. Also probably helped that I watched it in a good mood after an outstanding bowl of chicken soup at ‘Lord of S,’ the enigmatically-named restaurant across the street from the Gartenbau, followed by a cup of what the waiter described as “Arabian coffee.” A thick brown concoction seasoned with spices. Both coffee and soup helpful to alleviate the symptoms of a cold that I evidently brought back from the IDFA documentary festival in Amsterdam where I spent most of the week, travelling back via three trains across 15 hours on Thursday and into Friday morning. Lord of S (Arabian? Persian?) is open from 11am to 2am every day, shisha is often in evidence but I believe they keep serving food well after midnight. Good to know.
Saturday 29th November
Sunderland 3 – Bournemouth 2
Ljubljana, Slovenia (in town for the Animateka animation festival which starts on Monday): penultimate day of November, and the morning was chilly, temperature only a degree or so above zero. But the sun was shining brightly and there was no wind, so a little after noon I decided to brave the elements and headed out for a run in the Tivoli Park on the edge of the city centre. Shorts, but also woollen gloves and an old grey UCLA sweater tucked into the shorts (Rocky style?).
I was staying only a couple of minutes from the park entrances, on Vošnjakova ulica. At the end of the street, in the distance, the imposing snowy peaks of the Kamnik Alps. As usual, once you get moving you soon warms up (I stretched indoors, started running as soon as opened the door and stepped into the street.)
I ended up doing 36 minutes, including ten laps of the tree-lined Jakopič Promenade that, with a slight incline leads up to the grand little villas housing the International Centre of Graphic Arts and the Švicarija (“Swiss House”) Cultural Centre. Easy going down, a little tougher going up, and then on the very final lap a maroon-coated squirrel went darting across my path.
Wednesday 3rd December
Liverpool 1 – Sunderland 1
Still in Ljublana for Animateka festival: three days in, I watched one of the Main Competition programmes in KinoDvor (close to the main railway station and a former “adult” cinema) then hightailed it down the street to England Pub for the second half just after 10.10pm. I’ve been coming to Ljubljana fairly regularly since November 2002 (when I was on the jury of the city’s International Film Festival with a certain Anna Karina) but as far I can recall this was the first time I’d set foot in England Pub. Framed photos of the wall include: The Queen (Elizabeth II), The Queen with Prince Philip, Jeremy Brett as Sherlock Holmes (definitive!), plus — more unexpectedly — Stonehenge, a framed photo of which is unlikely to be found on the walls of any English pub outside the vicinity of Stonehenge itself.
Various clues around the place that the main target of fan ardour among patrons is Manchester United. But tonight, a different stripe of Lancastrian “reds.” I arrive just after the start of the second half, relieved to see it was still goalless. Sit with a pint of Guinness watching flat-screen TV mounted above the bar, the corner of the screen slightly obscured by a stone archway. Conversation behind, Mancunian women, much amusement at a story one of them told about a personalised number-plate that read ’40DD’ commemorating the 40th birthday of a gentleman with those initials.
66th minute: Moroccan-Belgian Chemdsine Talbi’s sweet long-range strike put us ahead (Talbi one of numerous Sunderland players who’ll be on national duty later this month for at least a couple of weeks at the African Nations’ Cup [as I stubbornly still think of it]; Morocco are 5/2 favourites to win the whole thing.) So while we’re flying surreally high at the moment, a dip by mid-January is surely something genius manager Régis Le Bris is planning around. We hold the lead for 15 minutes before Liverpool equalise, a goal I miss as I’m in the toilet, inevitably.
A ones-apiece draw away at Anfield is nothing to complain about; the final 7 minutes (injury-time) are somewhat nerve-wracking. If anything, we miss the best chance when a spectacularly well-placed goal kick by Robin Roefs very nearly leads to a late winner. It’s not to be, the ref finally blows, I pay for my €5.90 Guinness and head back to the dream-world of animated cinema.
Saturday 6th December
Manchester City 3 – Sunderland 0
Same city, same pub, same screen, same arch… different result. Again I only watched the second half (Animateka festival-duties continuing), this time by the time I arrived at England Pub we were already two down, after that we were somewhat fortunate to only concede one more. Class gulf evident; we can be competitive against and even beat teams in the lower half of the top 10, but against the Big Boys in the top 3 or 4 we are (perhaps inevitably) going to struggle. Next up… Newcastle!!!
Sunday 14th December
Sunderland 1 – Newcastle 0
Doctor Zhivago, all 14 hours of it, finally ended in the Gartenbaukino, Vienna around 3.40pm, giving me plenty of time to find a suitable pub to watch the second half starting around 4pm. BUT my first choice (Flanagan’s Irish bar) was stupidly full of bozo tourists, the other Irish bar around the corner (Golden Harp) was inexplicably shut, so I had to loop back to the Gartenbau and a little beyond, aiming for and ending up in Billabong (Australian) which I’ve walked past dozens of times but never been in. Arrived seconds after the half started and, same deal as Thessaloniki, somehow missed the goal, a “bullet” header by Newcastle’s dopey, tall German striker Nick Woltemade … into his own net.
The rest of the half was somewhat tense (I drank a half-litre of my favourite Vienna “brew,” Ottakringer Rotes Zwickl), with extra time extra long due to a bad-tempered bust-up which seemed to involve most of the players on the field and left Granit Xhaka with a nasty cut above his left eye. TV cameras got in close as the Vaseline was generously applied. Shades of Rocky! We held on to win the first “Wear-Tyne” (league) Derby for nearly a decade, propelling us up to 7th and seeing Newcastle drop to 12th. Will always have vivid memories of the fast walk from pub to pub to pub, the chill December air taking on a Muscovite tang thanks to the lingering memories of Zhivago.
Saturday 20th December
Brighton 0 – Sunderland 0
Centre and right above: Dan Ballard (26, from Stevenage) and Omar Alderete (turns 29 on Boxing Day, from Asunción, Paraguay), the key duo in Sunderland’s defence today against Brighton, ensuring we got a point and ended the day in 6th** — with no more games until after Christmas (thus wildly exceeding all sensible pre-season predictions), i.e. Sunday 28th when we entertain a scarily in-form Leeds.
Latter beat Palace 4-1 last night in something of a romp; I watched the highlights on BBC1, Match of the Day, in which former Sunderland (and Newcastle) goalkeeper Shay Given, an articulate pundit poured praise on the Ballard-Alderete combination, noting how in tense situations they move almost in instinctive lockstep.
Given is 49, but looks little older than when he played 17 games on loan for Sunderland from Blackburn in 1996; few players have ever become so popular at the club from so few appearances, and few have been so comprehensively forgiven for later playing for Newcastle (before looking it up I’d presumed he’d played at least double that number for us, and had been on our books for longer than three or four months; a framed original caricature of Given by Robin Brown can be seen on my kitchen wall in Vienna, with the Guinness-inspired text GIVEN IS GOOD FOR YOU.)
Watched most of Brighton-Sunderland game live at pals’ house in Ashbrooke, a famously “leafy” suburb of Sunderland where I lived from 1996 to 2016 (two doors up from the pals’ place): saw all of the second half and the first half of the first half. Draw a fair result — any points we can scrape with so many players away at the African Nations’ Cup from mid-December to mid-January are a bonus — though we did edge the corners tally 4-3. I’ve long nursed a theory that football would be improved (and play made more attacking) if corners were taken into account in the event of a full-time draw, the team with most being awarded an extra point (so in this instance Brighton would have got 1pt, Sunderland 2pts.)
11am, in seaside Ryhope, staying at my mother’s place for Christmas (arrived from Vienna via Leeds yesterday afternoon), went for my usual run to Silksworth and back. Shorts as always; cold enough for two t-shirts, but not so cold that a sweater was required. Ran a bit over half an hour or so in total, ending up on the cliffs at Ryhope looking out under gloweringly overcast skies down the coast towards Middlesbrough and Whitby beyond.
At several points along the way it was a bit muddy underfoot after heavy recent rains. After letting the wind blow around me on the clifftops for a minute or so, I padded down to the grassy bank to the beach — tide out — where I took off my shoes and socks, walked across the damp sand, and let the icy-cold waves lap my ankles and calves for a few minutes; long enough for my feet to turn a healthy red.
Saturday 28th December
Sunderland 1 – Leeds 1
Still in England (until tomorrow, Birmingham-Prague flight, back to Vienna the day after), this time most unusually watched the whole game live on TV at my brother & sister-in-law’s place near Worcester: barely stirred from the couch from kickoff (2pm) to the final whistle.
We scored first (Adingra, 28th minute, from a fantastic Xhaka “assist”; the great man was notably below-par for the rest of the game…) but after that it was basically mostly Leeds for the next hour-plus. They got one back in the second half (Calvert-Lewin, 47th minute) — both strikes nicely taken — and could/should have had at least a couple more… But they didn’t, which meant we remained in 7th (and stayed there, thanks to Spurs beating Palace away later in the afternoon, and will remain there as 2025 clicks into 2026 later this week).
Even at home, this was always going to be a very tricky one, with Sunderland having no fewer than five players away on African Nations’ Cup duty — Adingra could/should have been in Morocco on “AFCON” duty for the Ivory Coast — and given the fearsome form Leeds showed against Palace last week… and then our key defender Dan Ballard was ruled out (today) with an injury. Apparently he might be out for more than a month…. OUCH.
Given the circumstances, then, a more than solid outcome.
Other stuff going on today: belatedly watched the first episode of Adolescence on Netflix, am finishing Zola’s cascadingly grim L’Assommoir and can head straight into the “sequel” Nana having bought it (new!) in Birmingham yesterday on that damp, slightly drizzly, rapidly darkening December day when I tried and failed to see Marty Supreme.
Thursday 1st January 2026
Sunderland 0 – Manchester City 0
10.44pm Vienna time, I’m in the Admiral Sports Bar on the Prater, it’s nil nil. Maybe our best performance of the season so far (so far), holding a team unbeaten in several games to a goalless draw. And this with all those players on African duty, PLUS Ballard still injured. 7 minutes to go of regular time, neutrals (on social media) reckon we’ve been the better side so far… Trai Hulme has just gone down holding his calf, Xhaka is remonstrating, but then he smiles and shakes a Man City player’s hand. That big Xhaka smile, he always seems so reasonable, to be fully enjoying being one of the best players in the Premier League.
A bright blue-skied and un-windy day to start the year: just over 5 degrees at noon, so (having been in bed until 11 or so) I ran to the Alte Donau lakes, 38 minutes there, went out on one of the wooden platforms, took shoes and socks off, dunked feet in the zero-ish water several times before drying them off and basking in the sun for a while; it could almost have been a summer’s day. The rhythmic beating of swan wings as they laboured to take off…
85:52 and we regain possession, it’s understandably choppy now, but Isidor and Le Fée combine to give us a chance… But no. Admiral is closing in 10 minutes or, clanging sounds from the bar below as the barman continues to pack up. 87:45, Man City have the ball, passing it around, a dangerous chance, goalmouth scramble, constant pressure. But we clear it, make progress on the break. A goal could still be in the offing here; we deserve a point (at least?) Pretty desperate stuff, chances and tackles and fouls. The ever-dangerous Gvardiol falls onto his face. Four minutes’ injury time, one of which has elapsed. Man City passing, dangerous, eyeing a late winner. Two minutes to go – high tension, impossible to look away. One minute to go. Man City player crosses towards the goalmouth, but nobody’s there and we clear it. Another chance, but slow motionL Roefs saves it. Seconds to go now. Blow the whistle, ref. HE BLOWS. Xhaka and Alderete look relieved. Another against-the-odds point. Their keeper “kicking off,” Guardiola in among it, no idea what happened. Guardiola a friendly hand on the back of Xhaka’s neck. Xhaka smiling.
Monday 5th January
Tottenham Hotspur 1 – Sunderland 1
The second half of the season starts here (even though we somehow hadn’t actually played Spurs before today.)
A chilly January afternoon in Vienna; watched the second half in Flanagan’s, the inner city’s biggest Irish pub, after the usual wander in search of a telly showing the game. I’d a ticket for a 6pm picture (Ken Loach’s Hidden Agenda [1990], a leftish political thriller whose plot revolves around the shady character played by Sunderland-born Maurice Roëves) at the Filmmuseum, so had hoped to watch the second half in nearby, cosy Crossfield’s Australian pub. But they were, inexplicably, only showing Liverpool-Fulham, requiring me to range further afield.
Got to Flanagan’s 10 minutes into the 2nd half by which time we were already 1-0 down, but I did see 40 minutes (time for one leisurely Guinness) including injury time, a scrappy affair with an undercurrent of bad temper that occasionally flared into shoving and pushing. Chief moments of interest were the return of Dan Ballard in the 66th minute (a decidedly welcome sight considering there was talk he might be out for a month or more) and Brian Brobbey’s rather beautifully-taken equaliser in the 80th minute. We had several lively chances in the final minutes, but 1-1 seemed a fair result. Newcastle beat Crystal Palace 2-0 meaning that as I write this we’re 8th on 29 points and Newcastle are 9th on 28; I suspect that the tale of the rest of the season will (since we’re unlikely to qualify for Europe and are even more unlikely to be relegated) focus on this local rivalry.
Whistle blew at 5.55pm, I hightailed it along Walfischgasse i.e. “Whale Alley” (pausing for a second to nod at the W H Auden death-place plaque on the wall of number 5), dodging the selfie-snapping tourists attracted by the dopey, spangly, giant Christmas bow on the corner with Kärntner Straße, speeding past the Opera House on my left and the Hotel Sacher on my right, and was passing Bitzinger Restaurant (near-neighbour on the same block as the Filmmuseum) as the bells were chiming six.
Wednesday 7th January
Brentford 3 – Sunderland 0
Back to the Admiral on the Prater (“Europe’s Biggest Sportsbar”) on an icy January night [it’ll be -5 at 9am next day] for the second half, and once again we were 1-0 by the time it kicked off. A weak display ensued, summed by by Enzo Le Fée(ble)’s kittenish penalty, straight into the keeper’s hands, just before the hour mark. They got two more, one of them by mighty Brazilian (-Bulgarian?) Igor Thiago, who during his celebration deferred credit for the strike to God, pointing heavenwards. Nice to know that amid all else that’s going on in the world (USA kidnapping the Venezuelan head of state, ongoing horrors in Gaza, etc) He is bothered to intervene in a West London footy game.
So even though we had Dan Ballard back, having so many players away at the African Nations’ Cup plus having to contend with Brentford’s divine advantage unsurprisingly proved too much. I got through a half-litre of Schladminger Bio Zwickl (a reasonable €4.80) during the half, my attention wandering to the other five screens on the Admiral’s giant football wall.
A picturesque, foggy night in Parma, where they entertain Inter Milan… Athletic Bilbao (in red and white stripes and black shorts, idea stolen from us) getting hammered 5-0 in the Spanish cup semi-final; Brentford were wearing their home strip of red-and-white, just to rub it in. And oh look, James Milner has come on for Brighton against Man City… German-language commentary informs us that he turned 40 at the weekend and this is his 650th Premier League appearance with only the now-retired Gareth Barry ahead of him, and that by only 3. Another notable achievement by Milner is that he seems to have always looked exactly the same, going back to his days as a teenage prodigy.
I eventually drag my attention back to our game, in which we are firmly “schooled” by Brentford (to be fair, they’re at home and came into the game in much better form than we did, i.e. four draws in a row.) Our heaviest defeat since 3:0 at Coventry last March. To further compound the strife, Newcastle score a 102nd (!) minute winner against Leeds and end the night in 6th, two points and four places above us. Der Ball ist rund.
Saturday 10th January
FA Cup: Everton 1 – Sunderland 1 (Sunderland won 3-0 on penalties)
Subzero in Vienna for the fourth or fifth day in a row, snow and slush abundant… watched only the first half (for a change, started 1.15pm Austrian time) as I then headed to the Gartenbaukino cinema to see (starting 2.45pm) Kleber Mendonça Filho’s 2023 documentary Pictures of Ghosts, a love-letter to his home-city of Recife: a beachside spot on Brazil’s north-east coast. The only beachside city on England’s north-east coast is Sunderland, but I suspect the similarities stop there.
This being the FA Cup, we managed to continue our recent run of draws (1-1 after full time) AND also notch our first win since the Derby almost a month ago. Everton came into the game with low expectations, perhaps a bit worrying that we end up level with them before we blitzed them on penalties… James Garner having equalised for them in the same manner in the 89th minute (not the only player with a cinematic name on the pitch for the Toffees, James Tarkowski also lining up.)
I watched the “Ascot – ADMIRAL Sportsbar” in the city centre, an Admiral branch much more “upmarket” than Europe’s Biggest Sportsbar on the Prater (where I watched the Brentford horror-show earlier this week). Essentially a very fancy sort of betting-shop, Ascot is all marble-topped tables, mirrors everywhere, elaborate chandeliers, dark wood. But also big screens showing various sports: for most of the first half, our game was tucked away a corner of the display, the largest section devoted to downhill slalom (skiing is a very big deal in Austria).
Given how small the screen was, and how high up on the wall, it was somewhat hard to make out much of what was going on until around the 40th minute when the screens abruptly switched and our game took over the biggest part of the screen. But even under the circumstances, Le Fée’s goal was an impressive strike; quick atonement for his absurd penalty miss a few days ago.
I didn’t see our three penalties in the shoot-out (Everton scored none, embarrasingly) but reportedly they were all crackers. And hopefully this will buoy us up for the upcoming league games against Palace (home) and West Ham (away). Do we need the “distraction” of an FA Cup run right now? Maybe not, but the match generated much more positive energy and comment (especially for Granit Xhaka’s performance) than our recent below-par efforts, which seemed to potentially portend a grim second half of the season.
Saturday 17th January
Sunderland 2 – Crystal Palace 1
Above: “A snake is looking at us” (2024) by Isadora Romero, an Ecuadorian photographer whose exhibition Notes on How to Build a Forest I visited today at the very busy ‘C/O’ gallery/museum in ‘Amerika Haus’ near Zoo Station in Berlin (I’m here for two nights en route for Arctic Norway, and the Tromsø film festival.)
As the gallery’s website puts it: “Romero creates a multilayered visual narrative about two cloud forests in her homeland: the Chocó Andino de Pichincha biosphere of the Yunguilla community near the capital city of Quito and the Mache-Chindul reserve near the Pacific Ocean.”
This is one of the most colourful photography exhibitions I’ve seen, Romero bringing out all the natural glory of the cloud forest and also applying some extreme distortions, as in “A snake is looking at us.” The presentation of the photographs was also unusual and imaginative; this one was part of half a dozen playing-card-sized images mounted inside a wall-like cabinet, illuminated against dark backgrounds, visible through small round peep-holes which added to the eerie effect.
The red dragonfly.
At the Tsukuba, no cloud
Is seen.
—–Masaoka Shiki (1867-1902)
Saturday 24th January
West Ham 3 – Sunderland 1
West Ham in August? Steamy Sarajevo.
West Ham in January? Snowy Tromsø in arctic Norway, where I’m working at the city’s film-festival (my 11th time at the event, the first having been back in 2004 when Mick McCarthy was our manager. This is my last day here, and maybe the busiest: I introduced screenings of Italian classic A Special Day (1977) and new Spanish classic Sirāt (easily the best film of 2025), did the intro and Q+A for new Hungarian film Growing Down (a kind of eastern European Adolescence).
I also watched (in the morning) Brazilian film, The Blue Trail, and (in the evening) two British productions, the latter pair at Bryggeriet Scene, a live-music venue in one of the buildings housing the world’s most northerly brewery Mack. The second was Ben Wheatley’s bonkers lo-fi sci-fi Bulk, the first was Saipan, a fictionalised retelling of the infamous spat between McCarthy (then magaging Ireland) and his fiery captain Roy Keane on the eve of the 2002 World Cup. Steve Coogan predictably nails McCarthy’s dry, droll Barnsley tones as McCarthy; relative newcomer Éanna Hardwicke is quite sensational as Keane, and the picture itself (dealing with an essentially minor footnote in sporting history) is unexpectedly entertaining and even gripping at times. Amusing for Sunderland fans: McCarthy was followed as permanent Sunderland manager by Roy Keane; among the two interims between them was our sometime chairman Niall Quinn, who (genially incarnated by Jack Hickey) plays a prominent supporting role in the picture.
It ends around 11pm, and I head out into the wind-blown snow of Storgata (street) to head to the festival’s closing party.
Speaking of snow: in the afternoon I spotted a busy crow in the street next to Amtmandens café, in the shadow of the city’s 1970s-futuristic library (which back in 2004 was the festival’s main cinema, Fokus.) At first I thought had an unmelted snowflake on his wing, then realised it was a spot of white among his black feathers. The Norwegian for snowflake is snøfnugg, and therefore thus I name him.
Monday 2nd February
Sunderland 3 – Burnley 0
On a morning from a Bogart movie
In a country where they turn back time
You go strolling through the crowd like
Peter Lorre Contemplating a crime
Like many of the best people, Al Stewart is from Glasgow, one of the great cities of the world, where tonight I watched Sunderland hammer relegation-doomed Burney (managed by ageless Scott Parker, very Guy-Pearce-as-Edward-VIII) 3-0, first of all in some kind of private-club bath/gym place’s restaurant (in Hillhead, in the upscale West End of the city) eating a pizza with triple anchovies on it, and then in Tennent’s pub on Byres Road which has been in business since circa 1884.
There were some fears that on a windy night on a wet pitch and in the absence of Xhaka (out for a couple of weeks with an ankle injury) we might have some problems, but given Burnley’s woes (they were 1/33 to be relegated even before tonight) a comfortable victory like this wasn’t exactly a surprise. Habib Diarra, our record signing, got his first two goals for the club, though one of them was dopily recorded as an offside.
Photo above: Keitel in Tavernier’s Death Watch (1980), perhaps the finest and unlikeliest of Glasgow-shot pictures. Keitel, Romy Schneider, Robbie Coltrane, Harry Dean Stanton, Max Von Sydow. Those were the days.
Saturday 7th February
Arsenal 3 – Sunderland 0
In Amsterdam for four nights, work-related (film-screening here on Thursday, academic event connected with it in Leiden yesterday) and watched the second half of the first half, and the whole of the second half, in “PARCK aka Ping Pong Bar” on Overtoom street, not far from the city centre. Another trip to London, another three goals conceded, but at least against West Ham we got one back.
Then again, Arsenal are (at the time of writing) the red-hot favourites at 1/5 odds to win the league, so anything other than a hammering (in the continued absence of Xhaka) should probably be accepted as an OK result. And our last win away against them came on 7th May 1983*** (blond bombshell Colin West, 20, got the only goal.)
Drank three pints of Guinness (at a hefty €7.90 a pop) in a smallish bar that was pretty busy when I entered and became more so as the evening wore on; never been to PARCK before, the USP is ping-pong which was seemingly confined to rear quarters (I’m sure they’ll all just love Marty Supreme when it comes out in NL later this month…….)
Lots of tellies, Six Nations (England-Wales) also showing, but mainly our game, and with several of the clientele celebrating each of Arsenal’s goals. Main interest in the second half was the first appearance of our major transfer-window signing Nilson Angulo who we signed from Anderlecht for a reported €20m. He’s a surprisingly lanky sort from Ecuador (I was expecting a stocky, compact player), specifically Quinindé, pop. 31,000, which is “also known as Rosa Zárate.” How can a town have two names?
“The town of Quinindé has some interesting local traditions. One special food found here is known as ‘un jorkshia poodeen‘. It is thought that this unique dish came about after the Spanish colonial period. During that time, the British built many railways across Ecuador. This also brought some of their culture to the local areas.”
Wednesday 11th February
Sunderland 0 – Liverpool 1
Watched the second half in what has long been a magnet for Liverpool fans in Vienna, namely the Red Lion pub tucked away near Radetzkyplatz (one of the more nicely atmospheric parts of the city.) Surprising, then, that there was hardly anybody else there, perhaps half a dozen not including me and my Texan filmmaker pal Lawrence (who has lived in Europe long enough to know more than most of his compatriots about footy).
I’d expected a cauldron of seething Scouse passion, which most certainly did not materialise. I’d also envisaged perhaps treating the fans to a post-match a capella rendition of “You’ll Never Walk Alone” which I’ve performed in public as far afield as Serbia and Marseille, and even once, circa 2018 or so, in the Red Lion itself (just me and the landlady present). This also did not materialise. Perhaps next time.
Game was goalless until 6’5″ Dutchman Virgil Van Dijk headed one in from a free kick in the 61st minute, and 0-1 it remained, so thus we surrendered our unbeaten-at-home record this season (last team in the division to do so). No disgrace to lose by a single goal against Liverpool (sixth in league), just days after the stiff Arsenal test, though it does mean we slip behind Newcastle (10th/11th) on goal difference. Ach!
Sunday 15th February
FA Cup: Oxford United 0 – Sunderland 1
2.27pm CET, on the “Berliner” train (RJ176) between Bad Schandau and Dresden, en route to Berlin (for the Berlinale) with the river Elbe on the right, steady and brown, so steady I’d mistaken it for frozen earlier in the journey, finished the first chapter of my fellow Viennese-by-choice Elias Canetti’s only novel, Auto da Fé.
On this stretch of the Elbe: high rocky outcrops on the far bank, spangled and surmounted by hardy trees, mostly leafless at this mid-winter stage, the rock blocky and angular below, blobby and organic above. In the river, a long thin rippling V, bright, pulled along behind the small neck of a near-invisible bird. Soon after a small town on the river banks, an old house with the legend MEIN FRIEDEN.
Sunday 22nd February
Sunderland 1 – Fulham 3
Fulham, ouch.
Drowned sorrows late evening in Johnny’s, one of the better Irish pubs in Vienna (there must be more than a dozen in the city), in the company of a Romanian film-director and two Moldovans (one a composer, the other a biologist), this quartet drawn together by the European Film Festival which runs 19th-26th and of which I’m artistic director. The Romanian asked me for Irish-pub recommendations and Johnny’s was on the shortlist I scribbled down for him. A mild night after a snowy, wintry week: we arrived 10pm or so, stayed until 1.30am or so, during which period I had four Guinnesses as we discussed matters cinematic, with particular emphasis (not sure why) on Ridley Scott’s Napoleon.
Saturday 28th February
Bournemouth 1 – Sunderland 1
First day of the US/Israel-Iran war, last day of February, the pitch at the “Vitality Stadium” bathed in sunlight and sweat all over Xhaka’s face and neck when he was taken off after 75mins. I came in around the 55th minute, Admiral Sportsbar in Vienna’s Prater (again), paperback of Joseph Roth’s The Radetzky March on the table in front of me along with my sunglasses. Got there just in time to see the dangerous tackle by New Yorker Tyler Adams on Xhaka (latter making his first start since his comeback from injury.) This left Xhaka screaming and rolling around, not what you want to see given his recent woes, but he was soon up on his feet and bossing the play.
Dirty dirty Bournemouth… At the 86th minute, screen showed fouls tally: 14 by them, 8 by us. 22 in 86 minute, that’s more than one every four minutes. Nobody cares.
They came into the game on quite a roll (play dirty, win ugly) unlike our good selves. Under the circumstances a one-all draw away was a decent enough result. Much talk afterwards about how referee Jarred Gillett (an Aussie!) was biased against us, had a lousy game, etc. Can’t disagree (he conjured almost infinite additional time on the end of injury time) but better to take positives: if we start with Xhaka and Ballard (magnificent presence and touch) from now on, all should be well: this point took us into the top half of the table, one position ahead of Newcastle who we play soonish.
Spotted on a pitchside digital hoarding: advert for DUBAI’S FINEST VILLA COMMUNITY. No flights in our out of Dubai today: chaotic airport scenes. “This is not a regional disruption. This is the global aviation network breaking at one of its most critical nodes.” The bigger picture.
POSTSCRIPT, Sunday 1st March.
Somewhat bad news: we’re down to 11th. Very good news: Dan Ballard has just signed a new contract, keeping him at the club until at least 2029.
Tuesday 3rd March
Leeds 0 – Sunderland 1
Half-time whistle just blew, not that I heard it as the sound is off at the Golden Harp (Johannesgasse, Vienna) where I got the staff to switch to our game on arrival midway through the half… nobody else was in the front part of the bar, though the back room was packed (quiz?). We went into the game expecting a tough time due to injuries (including goalie Roefs, replaced by recent signing Ellborg), Xhaka on the bench… So nils apiece so far is encouraging; Leeds had several more chances in the first half, we had zero shots on goal. Our goal seems to stifle rather than attack, all a bit desperate.
Austrian adverts on telly, while the Stone Roses’ “I Wanna be Adored” plays over the sound-system. The Golden Harp, though part of a chain and nothing spectacular in itself, is a useful alternative to the better-known Flanagan’s on the same block, which is bigger but invariably rammed. Both serve lots of Guinness, meaning the Guinness in both places is solid.
Twitter comment by a Spanish-language observer: “Melker Ellborg, realizó una buena atajada en su debut al impedir un tiro libre de Anton Stach, salvo eso… Muy poca acción.”
…
CUT TO. Whistle blown. Hilarious game, we somehow won it. Five minutes after Leeds had a goal disallowed we got a penalty and put it in, and somehow kept the ball out of our net for the remainder of the game. Which was a LONG remainder: 12+ minutes of injury time. Quite the debut from Melker Ellborg, who was on-point for several saves. 30% of the possession, 100% of the goals. LOL. Like the main said, it’s called football, not fairball.
Sunday 8th March
FA Cup: Port Vale 1 – Sunderland 0
As we were being giant-killed out of the FA Cup (we might be giants!) I was feeding peanuts to two crows pitchside at the grandiosely (and strangely) named Dr. Hamza Arena in Erdberg, Vienna, home ground of venerable amateur side “Landstraßer Athletik Club-Inter” or LAC for short, surrounded on most sides by gigantic buildings including the Federal Administrative Court, a bulky 70s monstrosity of a certain hulking beauty. A short walk from the city’s incongruously scruffy international bus terminal, where I’d arrived from Regensburg (short film festival) a little while before.
I took the two crows to be a mating couple; the bloke was a hopalong, and quick to swoop on a nut; the female was able-bodied but more reticent. What must have been a warm afternoon was cooling off as I drank a melange coffee in a paper cup bought (€4) from the club bar. I sat on the patio alongside the pitch reading Joseph Roth’s 30s classic novel The Radetzky March, specifically the chapter at the end of part 2 told from the perspective of Emperor Franz Joseph. Who died in 1916 aged 86 and so in theory could have seen LAC play as they were founded in 1911, as proudly proclaimed on their red-and-black-striped, AC Milan-ish shield.
“The club was founded in 1911 by coachman Anton Sandner, who had already founded the Rennweg sports club, under the name “Athletik Club Training”. In 1918, the club was renamed Landstraßer Amateure. The Amateure experienced their most successful period in the 1930s, featuring future stars like Camillo Jerusalem, who later also played for the Austrian national team.
In 1933, the Landstraße amateur team played in the professional second division for the first time. This led to another name change in 1936, becoming “Landstraßer AC.” At that time, Landstraßer AC was also able to open its own stadium, located on Erdbergstraße, directly above the underground horse stables of the “Wotraubek Sausage Factory.” Back then, the Landstraße groundskeeper could clear the accumulated water after a downpour by pushing a long pole through the vaulted ceiling.”
Saturday 14th March
Sunderland 0 – Brighton 1
Up and out by 8.15 for a run along the waterfront at Thessaloniki; still some chill in the air, but it soon starts to warm up. Mucky, flotsam-crusted water lapping the promenade, which is all unfenced, though I’ve never seen anybody actually fall in. Mount Olympus invisible in the distance, only later will the air clear. Bobbing in the water a few yards from the shoreline: a large white rubber glove, yellow on the inside, perhaps for industrial use. Its white rubber fingers undulating in the dark choppy water of the bay, as though alive.
Sunday 22nd March
Newcastle 1 – Sunderland 2
2.35pm in Vienna, I’m back at Admiral Prater, which is showing the Derby on the smallest of its numerous screens. High drama at St James’ Park; after Newcastle going ahead early in the first half (thanks to O’Nien cockup) we equalised in the second (goalmouth scramble) and they’ve just had one disallowed (a Twitter quipster: “Great atmosphere, just scored a possible winner in a big local derby in front of the home end. VAR, we’ll have none of that thank you“).
77min gone and it’s ones apiece, which is not the way the bookies and gamblers (influenced by Newcastle’s fine recent form and our woes) had it beforehand. Holding on like this would could as a 1-1 victory, especially since Dan Ballard is out injured (again; bad timing!). We’ve had little luck since our outrageously flukey defeat of Leeds but with 10min (plus injury time) to go, perhaps the tide turns. We’re surely safe from relegation so the main interest now is (a) top-half finish (maybe even a European spot if we finish with a strong rattle) and (b) finishing ahead of Newcastle, but even 1pt today would leave us still behind them.
On the way here, fed more than a dozen peanuts (in shells, two at a time) to the crow I know best in my neighbourhood, I call him/her “spot white” after the Sunderland Echo’s old snooker/billiards correspondent because he/she has a spot of white on his/her otherwise black left breast. The Prater Admiral is less than five minutes’ walk from my front door and Spot White (who can evidently recohnise me from a considerable distance) always seems to be lurking nearby, ready to swoop down and eye me expectantly from 3-4 yards away. He/she is seldom (never?) disappointed.
We continue to hold on: 83min played. Xhaka consistently immense as usual. (Another Twitter observer: The Tyne-Wear Derby is 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥 at St. James Park. We had really missed this Derby for more than a decade #NEWSUN).
90th minute…….! Seconds after I email a Brobbey-loving Dutch pal: “Brobbey proving our trump card in this game, unexpectedly!” the big man only goes and scores.
100th minute, 2.57pm and the whistle FINALLY blows. Ladies and gentlemen, we are floating in space.
Sunday 12th April
Sunderland 1 – Tottenham Hotspur 0
4.25pm in Vienna, I’m back at Admiral Prater, which is not showing our game (first for three whole weeks, it kicked off at 3pm our time), even on the smallest of its numerous screens. I have to follow the score via a free-standing betting terminal (we win, again!) while keeping an eye on the horse-racing from Longchamp (Paris): the last of the afternoon’s three classic trials is the Prix Noailles, a stepping-stone to the Prix du Jockey-Club (“French Derby”) in June. It’s even older than SAFC (1879), as the first running was in 1878 under the name “Prix du Nabob” when the winner was Clementine. The greatest of all Prix Noailles winner was Pharis in 1939, an unbeaten champion whose career was truncated by the outbreak of World War II. Two years ago Calandagan prevailed and is now widely seen as the world’s best thoroughbred currently in training.
Today’s race is won in impressive style by Pearled Majesty, who makes all the running and shows notable determination and eagerness when galloping clear of his rivals in the straight. But the runner-up Space Waltz, a relative outsider in the betting who was doing his best work at the finish, might also prove pretty smart.
I’m pleased to see him show promising form, as he runs in the colours of the Niarchos family. Not only do they have perhaps the most attractive set of colours in the sport, they usually come up with intriguing names for their charges. Space Waltz, Wikipedia informs me, “are a New Zealand glam rock band formed in 1974 by frontman Alastair Riddell. In 1974, they had a number-one hit in New Zealand with ‘Out on the Street.'” Some Niarchos monikers from of Space Waltz’s immediate family: Phaenomena, Harajuku, Chichen Itza, Garden of the Gods.
Sunday 19th April
Aston Villa 4 – Sunderland 3
“Scheisse Marathon!” swore my phlegmatic taxi-driver Mr Sahin as we encountered yet another blocked road when we tried to get from my pal’s place near the British Embassy (3rd district) to my flat near the Prater funfair (2nd district), a journey of less than 2 1/2 minutes which would normally take less than 15 minutes and cost around €15. But not today, oh no, not today!
Short version of the story: idiotic me decided to move furniture (shelf units I’ve bought from my Canaries-bound pal) on the afternoon of the 43rd Vienna City Marathon, so we ended up on a massive detour across the Danube into Kaisermühlen and within spitting distance of the United Nations buildings.
And of course a rainstorm blew up just after we set off, though thankfully the trip to mine (€50) was so long it had dried up by the time I arrived. By this point I’d passed through irritation to zen acceptance to seeing the funny side of the albtraum, British style. We live, we learn… But then again I’ve been in Vienna full-time since 2019, so the penny really should have dropped before now. Scheisse Marathon!!!!!!!
POST-SCRIPT 4.48pm wasn’t going to mention The Match, which I’m not watching as they’re not showing it on any of the screens in the Prater Admiral, annoyingly… and anyway we were getting beat 2-1 at half-time and then went down 3-1…. but I just saw we’ve somehow equalised in double-quick time. Hume in the 86th minute, Isidor in the 87th minute (four minutes after he came on, replacing Brobbey). Everything post-Newcastle is of course a bonus now, but if we CAN somehow sneak into “Europe” why not dare to dream.
POST-SCRIPT 4.57pm Ah, dammit, the cutely-named Tammy Abraham (bürgerlich Kevin Oghenetega Tamaraebi Bakumo-Abraham) just scored for the home side. Seven-goal thriller at the Villa. Scheisse!
Friday 24th April
Sunderland 0 – Nottingham Forest 5
In Aosta (Italy) on a jury at a short-film festival (the 2nd edition of “Bref”) but no duties today so got up early and took the 8.30am Flixbus to Geneva, en route to Nyon (a little way up the lake) where another film festival was taking place: Visions du Réel, one of the biggest and most prestigious documentary events. Had never been to Geneva before and wandered around for an hour and a half, getting some idea of the place and the atmosphere. Let’s be charitable and presume that the place has “hidden charms” once you get out of the centre (I hear good things about the Carouge neighbourhood.)
In my bag was carrying a Joseph Conrad novel, but not the Geneva-set Under Western Eyes (which doesn’t exactly flatter the city), rather Lord Jim in an old Russian-printed English-language hardback. The only particularly memorable highlight was discovering Rousseau Island: the city’s most famous son not only has a street named after him and a statue, the statue is on a little island named after the bloke, surrounded by the clear but seemingly fish-free waters of the lake. No fish, but also no shortage of ducks and swans. And stretching from Rousseau’s nose to his knee, a thick spider-web.
Saturday 2nd May
Wolverhampton Wanderers 1 – Sunderland 1
In Linz, Austria (for the Crossing Europe film festival), this the city also often called “Linz an der Donau” here, or “Linz on the Danube” as the big river goes through the city centre in contrast to Vienna where it was straightened and shunted to the outskirts around 150 years ago. Today same as yesterday and the day before I was up and out before 9am, running 28 minutes and 29 seconds (I carry a stopwatch) from my hotel over the Nibelungen Bridge to the main part of town, down to the riverside, along to the next bridge downriver (the much newer Neue Eisenbahnbrücke, opened in 2021 and replacing a much more charming, slightly rickety one), along the riverside again (past the temporary funfair) and stopping at the Ars Electronica museum (‘Landmark 2009 building dubbed the “Museum of the Future”, with technology-based exhibitions.’)
Exact same route, three days in a row, a highlight of which is passing what may be Europe’s scariest and most sinister sculpture: Günther Uecker’s, Tisch der Austreibung (1977), or “Table of Expulsion” (photos above/below). In the words of the sculptor himself: “The Table of Expulsion is actually a sculpture that rejects humanity. People seek refuge under a table. This search for protection extends to fleeing into the security of a community, a state. Collective power becomes a looming threat.”
Saturday 9th May
Sunderland 0 – Manchester United 0
Something of a musical epiphany tonight in Novi Sad, Serbia’s 2nd biggest city, where the 14th “Srpsa Umea” two-day festival kicked off at at the CK13 Young Centre, aka Crna kuća, i.e. Black House. First band (Krut, from Sofia) took the stage 9.30, the last (local veterans) finished a little before midnight, with two in between: nicely noisy Orange Peel Her, from Romania and local youths NIKola, from the small town Bečej about an hour’s drive away.
I’ve seen literally hundreds of gigs since the late 80s, most of them in the punk and hardcore genres, and NIKola’s set, 20 minutes or so, deserves to be right up there in the top 10. An amusingly mismatched quartet who looked in their early 20s at best (seems they might actually be considerably younger than that) they played with wild enthusiasm, considerable musical talent and joyously upbeat swagger. After about 30 seconds of the first number it was obvious something very special was happening, and by the end the room (average age late 20s?) had been buoyed into a collective swoon of enthusiasm.
I met the phenomenal lead-singer/guitarist Dušan Gajinov afterwards with his parents looking on (maybe he’s not old enough to drive yet?) and told him how much I’d been knocked out and blown away. Juventude em marcha!
Sunday 17th May
Everton 1 – Sunderland 3
8pm in Breitensee, Vienna, I’m sitting on a bench over which looms the single spire of St Laurence’s Church, one of Vienna’s more impressive neighbourhood worship-spots (with a great mosaic depicting the gridiron-martyred saint above the main entrance. O P N = Ora Pro Nobis, Pray For Us.
I’m reading the film tie-in paperback of Doctor Zhivago which I picked up for a fiver in Serbia last weekend, keeping an eye on the church clock because at 8.40pm Arthur Penn’s neo-noir cult favourite Night Moves (1975) is screening at the nearby Breitenseer Lichtspiele, by some measures the world’s oldest still-running cinema.
A warmish day has given way to a slightly chilly evening, as I read about winter parties in pre-WW1 Moscow. A low-key Sunday after the excitements of the day before: Eurovision final in Vienna, the Stadthalle to be exact. I watched the show in the nearest pub to the venue, the oddly-named “By Charles,” emitting a loud cheer when Bulgaria’s score surged past Israel’s in the nail-biting climax. Bulgaria were 100/1 shots at the start of the week, 25/1 on Friday, 12/1 by Saturday afternoon but still hardly anybody remotely expected the landslide they pulled off. The result came through a little before 1am; By Charles closed not long after, but the party continued at a kebab/sausage stall on nearby Urban Loritz Platz…
I hear the muffled strains of the winning song “Bangaranga” from inside a passing car, and then the raucous call of a crow. After sunset, crows are thin on the ground; I turn, and there he is, scuttling along the pavement in front of a school across the street. I reach into my pocket, fish out two peanuts (in shells of course), and pitch them in his direction. It lands about three feet away from him, he looks warily quizzical at this unexpected treat, but then rapidly picks both up and flaps away beyond the church to perch on a rooftop gutter. The bells of St Laurence chime the half-hour. DONG! DONG!
Sunday 24th May
Sunderland 2 – Chelsea 1
A couple of minutes after midnight, it’s now Monday here in Stuwerviertel, Vienna and the final day of the 2025/6 season just ended. The day on which we beat Cbelsea at home and, other results going our way, secured qualification for Europe: the first time we’ve done so for more than half a century. We finished 7th in the end (five places ahead of Newcastle, having beaten them home and away), wildly exceeding any rational hope or prediction at the start of the season having been promoted by the skin of our teeth via the play-offs.
I saw nothing of the match (untelevised here in Austria, of course), was watching Gus Van Sant’s My Own Private Idaho (1991) at the Gartenbaukino. Afterwards I went to the Hilton Hotel on Stadtpark to get online and check the results. BBC Sport headline about the final day: West Ham relegated, Sunderland in Europe. Ah yes, West Ham, who we beat on the first day of the season, against all expectation etc, when I was working at the Sarajevo Film Festival.
From that day, if I didn’t watch any of the match itself I didn’t mention the match anywhere in this diary (with a couple of glancing exceptions). Instead detailed other stuff going on, stuff I’d noticed, passing details, whatever. I had the idea to keep this diary in Milan last August on a tram, it just popped into my head. Worth a try I thought, though at the time I presumed it would be a tale of woe and a slow-motion tumble into relegation.
So this is the end: I salute the achievement of the players and behind-the-scenes staff and the fans (especially the hardcore travelling ones), with special mention for Dan Ballard, our inspirational captain Granit Xhaka and our miracle-working manager Régis le Bris. I hope we keep him: onward and upward, if so.
After leaving the Hilton I ran to the Prater funfair, pausing on the Rotunda Bridge to admire the pinkish sky reflected in the dark green Donaukanal. After completing my 45-minute run I cooled off in my preferred style via the Aqua Gaudi log-flume ride, three descents of increasing vertiginousness into splashing water, the last and highest one leaving me, as always, daftly exhilarated.
Neil Young
* Energico won, beating Eri King. Giovanni was a fairly respectable eighth, but Shohei and Yamanin Bouclier flopped altogether. They’re not machines.
** Man United could have gone above us if they’d beaten Villa the following day, but thanks to Morgan Rogers (just the kind of striker we need, see also Bournemouth’s Antoine Semenyo), they did not.
*** Shūji Terayama had died [47] had died three days earlier; John Fante [74] died the day after.
^^ correction 3/9/26 [a helpful reader writes!]:
“On Saturday, August 15, you write about walking up the street named Patriotske lige. In most Slavic languages, thanks to needlessly complex conjugation and declension rules, verbs and nouns change depending on what their job is in a sentence or a phrase. The street you walked up is originally called Ulica patriotske lige (Street of Patriotic League) and also labeled as such (see attached), but Google Maps mistakenly drops “street” from its street name descriptions, making everything sound really weird, as if every street in Slavic cities begins with Of. You should keep the full name and say you walked up Ulica patriotske lige, thus making it clear to everyone that declension is taking place here and the street name is referring to patriotska liga (a known phenomenon) and not patriotske lige (which, unfortunately enough, is not only a declension, but also a plural version of the same phenomenon, thus additionally muddying the waters).”
