Lee Johnson has heard a lot about Didier Deschamps in recent weeks. “Kyril tells me he did really well for his family at Marseille and won a few cups,” says Sunderland’s manager, deadpan, his zoom-powered smile lighting up the laptop screen. “I’m not sure if it’s a positive or a negative.”
Kyril is Kyril Louis-Dreyfus, the 23-year-old trust fund billionaire who has become Sunderland’s owner just in time to see the League One club take on Tranmere of League Two in the Papa John’s Trophy final at Wembley on Sunday.
By the time of his birth, Kyril’s parents had purchased Marseille, with his mother, Margarita, running the club for seven years after the death of her husband, Robert, in 2009. During Deschamps’s three years in charge before he became France manager in 2012, six trophies were hoisted at the Stade Vélodrome and Louis-Dreyfus Jr is suitably keen for Johnson to develop a similar habit at the Stadium of Light.
It is a challenge the 39-year-old tasked with eventually returning Sunderland to the Premier League seems to be relishing. “Wembley is one step towards our resurrection,” says the former Bristol City manager. “Success breeds success.”
Failure and Sunderland have too often been synonymous in recent years. Since Ian Porterfield’s goal brought a 1-0 win against Don Revie’s Leeds in the 1973 FA Cup final, seven returns to Wembley have all ended in defeat.
There is optimism that this time it will be different. Since succeeding Phil Parkinson in December, Johnson has re-energised the team, with six wins in their last seven League One games, reviving hopes of automatic promotion. Tellingly, Charlie Wyke has scored 18 goals in 20 games under the new manager’s direction.
Although Louis-Dreyfus’s takeover was not completed until last month, Johnson was very much his appointment and the pair have bonded. “The beauty of Kyril, and where we share similarities, is that he’s ever so curious,” says Sunderland’s manager. “A lot of our conversations are based on curiosity; how can we develop, how can we improve. If that message comes from the top it can be really powerful; it allows the staff to bring their personalities to work and innovate. No one can afford to be stuck in a rut.”
In downtime the pair play head tennis, with Johnson laughingly denying a report he had recently been beaten by an owner who has swiftly relocated to north-east England, before conceding his boss has “a decent touch”.
Both men cannot, in Johnson’s words, “wait to feel the power” generated by a full house of nearly 50,000 at the Stadium of Light. Already, the manager has been impressed by the “quality and class” of Sunderland fans in raising more than £150,000 with a virtual Wembley match ticketing fundraiser for local food poverty, social isolation and mental health causes championed by the club’s charity, the Foundation of Light.
Supporters watching the final on television can enhance their experience by printing out commemorative match tickets and programmes in return for donations to “Sunderland Together”. Raffle prizes include a signed pair of the England and former Sunderland goalkeeper Jordan Pickford’s gloves.
“I think it’s genius,” says Johnson, praising an initiative dreamed up by Peter Richardson, a lifelong Sunderland fan. “It’s really novel idea – and for local charities to benefit is amazing. My family will be watching at home and I’ve sent them their virtual tickets.”
His father, Gary, now managing Torquay in the National League, remains an important sounding board. “My dad’s always there to give me advice, not that I always take it, and to lean on,” he says. “At the moment I think he’s starting a branch of our fan club in Portishead, near Bristol, with my mum. They’ve decked their place out with Sunderland flags, ready for Sunday.”
Johnson concedes that, even in the context of this socially distanced time, walking out at an empty Wembley will represent “maximum strangeness”. Before previous finals, Sunderland supporters descended on London en masse, colonising Trafalgar Square and Covent Garden. In 2019 the capital was invaded twice, with Jack Ross’s side losing both the equivalent of Sunday’s final and the League One play-off final.
“They weren’t exactly great football experiences,” says Johnson’s captain, the Birkenhead-born Max Power, who began his career at Tranmere. “But I remember us all stepping off the train at King’s Cross and there were thousands of our fans in the station.
“When we got on to the platform they broke into a song and it echoed around King’s Cross. That’s something I’ll never forget. It was a surreal moment. We as players understand the privilege of playing for this football club and how much it means to everyone in this region.”
