Dan Ballard issues rallying Sunderland message before historic European night at Stadium of Light
Dan Ballard has issued a rallying message ahead of Sunderland’s historic Europa League meeting with AZ Alkmaar
Dan Ballard has urged Sunderland to take the positives from their performance against Arsenal into Wednesday night’s historic Europa League fixture against AZ Alkmaar.
The Black Cats will play their first European game in 53 years when the Dutch side visit the Stadium of Light, marking another major milestone in the club’s rapid progress under Régis Le Bris. Sunderland qualified for the competition by finishing seventh in the Premier League last season, with their memorable victory over Chelsea among the results which helped secure European football.
Their league-phase campaign will begin only a few days after a 2-0 home defeat against reigning Premier League champions Arsenal. The scoreline did not reflect the balance of the contest, with Sunderland pushing Mikel Arteta’s side throughout and creating several opportunities.
Enzo Le Fée had a second-half penalty saved by David Raya before Bruno Guimarães opened the scoring just two minutes later. Sunderland continued to threaten, but Raya made several more important saves before Bukayo Saka converted a late penalty following Reinildo’s dismissal.
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Ballard believes Sunderland can carry plenty of encouragement into Wednesday’s game. The defender also expects another powerful atmosphere under the Stadium of Light floodlights as supporters prepare to witness a night which has been more than half a century in the making.
“We’ll take all the positives from tonight,” Ballard said. “We can see how the crowd push us, especially on nights like this, and I think Wednesday will be exactly the same. We’re all excited as players, and I imagine the fans are. Since we won that game against Chelsea, we’ve been looking forward to this, and it seems to have come around quite quickly. It’s something to look forward to. We won’t dwell on this result. We’ll take the positives from the performance and hopefully go and win on Wednesday.”
Reacting to the loss against Arsenal, Ballard added: “I think we’re extremely disappointed with the result. We’re disappointed because we put in a decent performance and really pushed them all the way. It was just small margins in the end that cost us. We know how great they are, but we really believed we could win this game. From the first minute, we showed we’ve got a lot of quality.”