On this day in 1973, Sunderland progressed to the second round of the Cup Winners’ Cup with a 1-0 victory over Vasas Budapest in our first ever home European game in a major competition.
The tie was essentially already settled going into the second leg, with the Black Cats running out of Budapest 2-0 winners, Vasas Budapest needed three goals to progress due to the away goals rule.
Most of the drama for this game actually occurred off the pitch, with a rather low crowd of just 22,762 turning up for the historical occasion, this was partly blamed on the bad weather but was mainly a reaction to ticket prices that were perceived to be too high by many of the red and white faithful.
If you just looked at the game as a one off, similarly to the first leg, Sunderland would be considered the underdogs. Vasas Budapest had a team filled with Hungarian internationals and Sunderland were in the Second Division.
Sunderland’s squad did have many of the FA Cup final heroes in it however, with the likes of Jimmy Montgomery, Ian Porterfield and Vic Halom starting. There was only one change from the first leg with Richie Pitt being replaced by David Young.
The game wasn’t really that exciting, Sunderland ran out 1-0 winners due to a Dennis Tueart penalty (he had also scored in the first leg) but it could have been another 2-0 win had another Tueart goal not been disallowed.
So Sunderland prolonged their first and (so far) only European adventure in the second round, defying expectations that the Hungarian outfit would easily sweep past us.
Next up would be two games against Portuguese giants Sporting, where Sunderland would cause another upset by winning 2-1 in the home leg but unfortunately were defeated 2-0 in the following clash and would be eliminated.
Elsewhere that season, the Black Cats would cause another upset in a cup competition by beating Brian Clough’s Derby County 3-0 in the League Cup in a second replay. We narrowly missed out on promotion finishing in 6th place just two points off 3rd place Carlisle United.
Sunderland have failed to return to European football since, but have come close on a number of occasions, missing out to Liverpool after they beat us in the 1992 FA Cup final, only four point separating us from the UEFA Cup in 2001 and being 35 minutes away in 2014 after losing to Man City in the 2014 League Cup final being the most prominent examples. Although with the way the club is run and with what clubs such as Brighton have been able to do after being promoted it’s not hard to envisage European football finally returning to Wearside in the not so distant future.
