'Incredible': Noah Sadiki's brilliant reaction to historic winner and Sunderland pledge

Noah Sadiki says he is targeting more goals for Sunderland after his dramatic late strike against SCU Torreense on Thursday evening.

Sadiki scored his first goal for the club in stoppage time as the Black Cats completed their comeback against the Portuguese side in Leiria, before racing to celebrate with the 4,000 travelling fans. Sadiki said he was proud to be part of Sunderland history on their first European away game for over 50 years, and particularly happy to make sure his lack of goals was no longer the subject of discussion on the training.

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“I think it was a good goal," he said. "If the ball ends up in the net, then it is always a terrific finish. I’m really happy to be able to contribute in that way – for the first time in 43 games. People have been telling me that. I’m just really happy to have scored such a big goal. My team-mates have been on at me all the time in training about it. They have laughed quite a lot. Every time I missed a shot in training, people were reminding me that I had never scored for the team. They were always saying, ‘When are you going to score?’ It’s kind of cool to have stopped that now. I have shushed them up a little bit, and that’s great.

“It’s the first time I could do it [jump across the hoardings and celebrate] so I wasn’t going to miss out. Hopefully, there are more moments like that in the future. I am looking forward to hopefully scoring more and helping the team more.

“We knew there would be lots of fans coming over," he added. "That just shows the passion and commitment that the fans and the city have to this team. Every week, we need to show them that we are ready to fight for the badge. They are with us, and we need to do as much as we can.

“I know it is a moment of history for the club. It is something that the city and the supporters are not going to forget. I’m really happy to be part of that story. After 53 years, to have a moment like that was incredible. It’s not the most important thing though. We have not won a trophy by winning that game – there is still so much more that we want to do. We need to aim for more, aim for higher. We can do that."

While Sunderland's performance was far from convincing and particularly in the first hour, Sadiki said getting over the line was crucial after some frustrating recent results.

“It was a big win," he said. "It wasn’t an easy game to come here and play against them. They made it really difficult for us. We got ourselves into a difficult situation, but we found a way to win and that is the most important thing.

“I think we can grow from the last month. If you look at the Arsenal and Man City games, then we played well but we didn’t win. Here [against Torreense], I think we played okay, but we won and that was important. Sometimes, in football, you just have to get the result and we did that. That’s what we need to aim for every weekend now – we need the performances, but we need the results, scoring more goals than the opponent."

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