Back in happier times, Sunderland were thriving in the Premier League with Chelsea’s Marcos Alonso playing left-back at the Stadium of Light.
Marcos Alonso might have gone on to bigger and better things in the game, but the Chelsea star still looks back on his formative days at Sunderland with a great deal of fondness, in quotes reported by the Chronicle.
Two years before the swashbuckling Spaniard moved to Stamford Bridge in a £24 million deal from Fiorentina, Alonso was flying down the flanks on Wearside.
The one-time Real Madrid youngster spent part of the 2013/14 season on loan at Sunderland and really made an impression in the red and white stripes, helping Gus Poyet’s side reach the League Cup final while finishing comfortably clear of the relegation zone, which was a rare achievement for the Black Cats at the time.
These days, Alonso is a Premier League, FA Cup and Europa League winner, having enjoyed a trophy-laden spell in West London. But that does not mean the 29-year-old has forgotten about the club who gave him the platform to prove himself.
“I like to follow always the teams I have previously played for. I follow Real Madrid a lot, I follow Bolton as well. But Sunderland is a special club for me. Even if I was only there for six months, it feels like I was there a lot longer,” Alonso says.
“I only played there for five or six months but really enjoyed my time there and connected from the very first day with the fans. I have great memories from my time there.”
With Sunderland now toiling in the third tier of English football, Black Cats fans could be forgiven for looking back on that 2013/14 team with a great deal of nostalgia.
Fabio Borini, Connor Wickham and Jack Colback produced arguably the best performances of their career under Poyet with Emmanuele Giaccherini and Ki Sung-Yeung adding a touch of international class.
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