Ten Years Ago

T_Bone

Striker
10 years ago we took part in the Amsterdam Tournament where we were invited guests to ply our trade against Ajax and Atletico Madrid and Benfica.
Steve Bruce had just been appointed as manager and declared we would be shopping at Harrods.
I must point out at this point we were playing Benfica’s first team not second team as of now.
We had about 2000 or 2500 fans in the city when we lost to Benfica in our opening game. Benfica fans who numbered about 500 were, in my experience very wary and unfriendly.
I would say about 25k Ajax fans were there.
We signed Lorik Cana from Marseille while we were there. Great News.
The mags lost 6-0 in their pre season friendly to Leyton Orient. Oh how we partied in Bar Louis.
We then played Atletico Madrid who had Forlan and Aguero up front and about 300 fans who were shit scared of us e ven though we were there to be friends.. We played in our Galaxtico all white strip. Keiron Richardson and Anton Ferdinand outstanding, we beat them 2-0.
“ Hello Hello We are the Sunderland Boys” deafening as we left the stadium.
Proud to be Sunderland, great crack great weekend
.These Days we are playing their reserves on their own patch.
Anyone got any memories of that tournament ten years ago ?
 
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10 years ago we took part in the Amsterdam Tournament where we were invited guests to ply our trade against Ajax and Atletico Madrid and Benfica.
Steve Bruce had just been appointed as manager and declared we would be shopping at Harrods.
I must point out at this point we were playing Benfica’s first team not second team as of now.
We had about 2000 or 2500 fans in the city when we lost to Benfica in our opening game. Benfica fans who numbered about 500 were, in my experience very wary and unfriendly.
I would say about 25k Ajax fans were there.
We signed Lorik Cana from Marseille while we were there. Great News.
The mags lost 6-0 in their pre season friendly to Leyton Orient. Oh how we partied in Bar Louis.
We then played Atletico Madrid who had Forlan and Aguero up front and about 300 fans who were shit scared of us e ven though we were there to be friends.. We played in our Galaxtico all white strip. Keiron Richardson and Anton Ferdinand outstanding, we beat them 2-0.
“ Hello Hello We are the Sunderland Boys” deafening as we left the stadium.
Proud to be Sunderland, great crack great weekend
.These Days we are playing their reserves on their own patch.
Anyone got any memories of that tournament ten years ago ?
Aye them stairs to the bogs in bar Louis!!
 
10 years ago we took part in the Amsterdam Tournament where we were invited guests to ply our trade against Ajax and Atletico Madrid and Benfica.
Steve Bruce had just been appointed as manager and declared we would be shopping at Harrods.
I must point out at this point we were playing Benfica’s first team not second team as of now.
We had about 2000 or 2500 fans in the city when we lost to Benfica in our opening game. Benfica fans who numbered about 500 were, in my experience very wary and unfriendly.
I would say about 25k Ajax fans were there.
We signed Lorik Cana from Marseille while we were there. Great News.
The mags lost 6-0 in their pre season friendly to Leyton Orient. Oh how we partied in Bar Louis.
We then played Atletico Madrid who had Forlan and Aguero up front and about 300 fans who were shit scared of us e ven though we were there to be friends.. We played in our Galaxtico all white strip. Keiron Richardson and Anton Ferdinand outstanding, we beat them 2-0.
“ Hello Hello We are the Sunderland Boys” deafening as we left the stadium.
Proud to be Sunderland, great crack great weekend
.These Days we are playing their reserves on their own patch.
Anyone got any memories of that tournament ten years ago ?
Was a fab trip
 
One of my favourite pre season friendlies was forest away in 2008. Think we won one nil. We'd just survived our first season up thanks to Chopra, mcshane, nyron, etc.

Then we went and signed malbranque, cisse, teenu tanio etc

We were in the big boys league now.

Diouf, chimbonda and Richardson

As well
 
Was thinking back tonight of watching us from a deansgate bar playing on setanter or whatever its called in Portugal.

What 8 year back?

Now were third tier playing reserves ffs.
 
Aye them stairs to the bogs in bar Louis!!
You are not kidding. Break your neck time.
You know what, the owner of that bar showed us photos of him and his son pitchside at the S O L with our shirts on.
He had a British bulldog outside with our shirt on. He reckoned he was one of us.
Loads of other clubs fans have claimed the same. He has photos of himself and his son pitchside in other clubs colours. The twat.
Very clever actually. Didn’t do him any good on the Saturday night when the Ajax fans put his windows out
 
You are not kidding. Break your neck time.
You know what, the owner of that bar showed us photos of him and his son pitchside at the S O L with our shirts on.
He had a British bulldog outside with our shirt on. He reckoned he was one of us.
Loads of other clubs fans have claimed the same. He has photos of himself and his son pitchside in other clubs colours. The twat.
Very clever actually. Didn’t do him any good on the Saturday night when the Ajax fans put his windows out
Aye we arrived minutes after the Ajax fans had been and it was all calm. 5 minutes earlier apparently it had been bedlam!!

It was a tremendous weekend and from the football side it really felt like the start of something. As we arrived in Amsterdam central we had our pictures taken for the Echo. We had a flag with FTM in the union flag bit of a white ensign which the Echo edited out!!
 

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