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In English soccer, the matches aren’t always just about wins and losses. Sometimes, they’re a matter of survival. .
Illustration by Ryan Graber.

Sunderland, England, is reveling in an outrageously unseasonable springlike day. Brilliant rays of sunlight, thin and steeply angled as they are, have temporarily checked the dank winter gloom that tarps this northern English city.

But meteorological mercy is only framing the delight. The real celebration and figurative sunshine is all about the town’s beloved soccer team, which has just come shining through. It’s a “massive” win, as they say over here.

So, just beyond the Stadium of Light, home to Sunderland’s dear Black Cats, pubs like the Howard Arms, the Fort, and the Albion are roiling in pint-infused joy. They are reliving two critical goals, waxing ecstatic over the 2–0 victory, and toasting the 11 men of the moment. To hear the fans, you’d think their Black Cats had just kept Sunderland from falling dead away into the North Sea.

And, in a sense, that’s exactly what they did.

For now, at least, the Black Cats have secured the city’s prized place among the giants of English soccer (or football, as it’s known here). But this wasn’t a match in some riveting championship chase. In fact, it was just the opposite. The victory, for which one struggling team clubbed another bottom-barrel bunch, will go far in preserving Sunderland’s stake in the venerable English Premier League (EPL), arguably the best and richest league in global soccer. It was a triumph in what’s known as a relegation battle, a clash of two teams that are fl ailing near the basement of the standings.

The gravity of these encounters cannot be underestimated, because every year, the bottom EPL teams are relegated, or moved down a division, while top clubs from lower-wattage levels are promoted giddily into their places. England has 92 top professional soccer teams, 20 in the EPL and 72 split among three lower tiers in the Football League. Theoretically, a club could climb from the fourth division into the Premiership in three seasons by claiming promotion places -- fairy-tale stuff indeed. But there’s a far less dreamy side to this zero-sum process. For every team that moves up, some sad sack must fall. That team is awarded a virtual third-class ticket on the train to nowhere.

By the second half of a season, a big percentage of EPL drama is focused on desperate efforts to dodge the scourge of relegation. To be dropped means more than losing luster and fame; it spells financial crisis and at least one season without marquee matches against England’s glamour teams. It typically means dismantling the roster and waving bye-bye to any player with serious skills.

Essentially, the relegation battle is always an absolute must-win, with stark black-and- white ramifications: The victor secures a reprieve and breathing room, while the loser quickens its march toward lower-tier gloom and doom.

There’s nothing like a relegation battle in the United States, where pro sports leagues don’t spin on an axis of promotion. The contractual trappings of TV deals, corporate sponsorships, players’ unions, and such would never allow it.

But imagine the high anxiety and drama there would be if American sports were flavored by promotion-relegation drama. How long could the long-suffering Chicago Cubs survive before being sent to the minors? Or how long could the New York Knicks hold on before being cast down into the NBA’s Development League? And how does this sound for a public-address follow-up to the Miami Dolphins’ pitiful 2007 NFL season : “Ladies and gentlemen, let’s welcome your Miami Dolphins to their debut game in the Arena Football League!”

That’s why relegation clashes mean so much. In U.S. sports, few people worry about the consequences when two wretched teams meet in a season’s final stretch. Those games don’t mean a thing.

But in England, and in most of the soccer-loving world, they mean everything.

Steve Morrow, who manages Major League Soccer’s FC Dallas club, spent much of his playing career with London’s famed Arsenal team, a storied EPL club that first took to the field in 1886. But he also saw his share of relegation challenges during a four-year hitch with Queens Park Rangers, a West London outfit and something of a “yo-yo club.” That is, they bounce up and down in the promotion-relegation chase.

Morrow says there is certainly pressure in fighting for championships at the top. “But if you really want to know about pressure, go play in a relegation battle,” he says. “That’s real pressure.”

Ian Whittell, a Manchester-based journalist who writes for the Times of London and the Observer, is even more emphatic in describing the specter of disaster that shrouds these matches. “The psychological impact of relegation is immeasurable,” he says. “The financial impact is massive. It could take decades for them to recover. A lot of teams never recover from it.”

Every fan in England has his or her own relegation war stories, personal tales of staving off (or acquiescing to) the relegation beast. So much attention is paid to relegation here, it’s almost as if these door- die scenarios play to England’s collective regard for fortitude and steely pluck in the face of potential ruin.

All of that helps explain the palpable relief in Sunderland on this sunny afternoon. The fallen opponent is Wigan, which entered the afternoon tied with the Black Cats, just one little place out of the drop zone.

The Black Cats’ fans have been there before, subjected to second-division ignominy.

“It’s a bit embarrassing, really,” says Les Owen, a schoolteacher and a Sunderland-club supporter since he was a boy. He remembers a time when the team actually slid into the third tier for a season. “That was absolutely the lowest.”

Terry Milson, 51, a lifelong Sunderland supporter who has the club’s badge tattooed over his heart, has another word to describe falling into a lower tier. “Devastating,” he says with a grimace as his pal drops off another pint at this Roker Avenue pub just down from Sunderland’s seaside.

It can be especially devastating in cities like this, places that have seen better days. Here, much of the town’s collective self-image is tethered to soccer.

Sunderland (population 290,000) sits along England’s right flank in the industrial northeast. Here, and in many of this area’s midsize cities, the decline of heavy industry has struck like an economic hammer. Reductions in shipbuilding and coal mining have cost the Sunderland region about 30,000 jobs over the last couple decades or so, rendering the economy as grim as a crime scene.

The weather can be equally bleak. The average high temperature in December, January, and February is 42 degrees Fahrenheit. The frequent thick fog ensures that there’s a wet cold and near-constant heavy-sweater weather.

So Sunderlanders live for their team. What else is there? Sunderland is to English football what Green Bay is to American football: a scrappy little bruiser of a city that manages through sports to keep fast company with the wealthy boys of the neighborhood.

The Black Cats spent lavishly (by the club’s standards) in the off-season player- transfer market, shelling out over £27 million (or $54 million) to protect its EPL seat. And last season, it hired manager Roy Keane, a legendary figure who only recently retired from a decorated playing career with Manchester United. Just don’t try talking to the frequently churlish and combative Keane about the nightmare of relegation. Club officials declined interview requests, indicating that Keane will not speak of it, nor will he tolerate any mention of the word in his locker room.

But the fans sure will. Talk of Saturday’s “six-pointer” dominates the sports-friendly pubs of Sunderland on the eve of the Wigan clash. Teams get three points in the standings for a win. Claim a relegation battle “W” and you’ve not just gained three points, you’ve also prevented the other fellow from collecting them. Hence, six points are theoretically on the line.

The same talk prevails on Saturday during another time-honored ritual of England’s pub culture: having one or two pints before walking over to the stadium. Milson and his buddy Brian Jobson have brought their young sons to the Fort pub, next to one of England’s ubiquitous chippies (where you can get takeaway fish-and-chips).

The one break from all the Sunderland talk comes when they notice that Newcastle United, a despised rival just northwest of the city, is losing already. To Sunderland supporters, the only thing that rivals a Black Cats victory is watching a Newcastle effort circle the drain.

So a question goes around the table: Is it better for the Black Cats to lose twice this year to Newcastle but remain in the EPL, or to whip the hated Toon twice but fall sadly into the second division?

“Oh,” both of them say in defeated unison, as if they’ve been asked to select a limb to sever. Finally, Jobson speaks up. He helps manage a shipyard up near Newcastle, so he’s particularly affected by the rivalry.

“Normally, I’d rather boil me head than lose twice to Newcastle,” the big fellow says. “But in that case, I guess I’d have to boil me head.”

There was a time when the Black Cats could regularly stand beside England’s mightier clubs. But the modern game here resembles most U.S. sports in its slavery to the almighty dollar. Money buys talent, and talent usually triumphs, leaving only occasional gaps for hard-working smaller sides to join the championship conversation.

Generally, supporters at places like Sunderland hope only to remain competitive; to occasionally challenge for a trophy; and, above all, to avoid the trapdoor of relegation.

It’s not just the fan heartbreak following relegation that makes it so ruinous; the fiscal hammer also swings brutally. Gate revenue drops significantly, as fewer fans attend. Plus, clubs can’t charge blockbuster prices to see B-list teams. Fewer fans and lack of Premiership exposure mean shrinking sponsorship interest, not to mention less TV money. Sky Sports and Setanta recently agreed to a combined £1.7 billion (about $3.4 billion) TV-rights package, which guarantees each EPL club about £28 million ($56 million) a year. Drop into the next division, and the TV take falls to about £1.2 million per team.

Wigan manager Steve Bruce told the Wigan Observer that about £35 million (about $70 million) annually is at stake when trying to remain in EPL grace. Fallen clubs get two years of “parachute” payments, but those are only a percentage of the grab active EPL members receive.

“The minute you are relegated, you are on the clock,” Whittell says. “You’ve got two years to claw your way back [into the EPL]. If you don’t get back into the Premier League in two years, you can be in real trouble.”But it’s not easy to do. Faced with mammoth revenue loss, teams must slash the payroll and jettison the priciest talent. Even if fallen clubs could afford an A-list payroll, truly talented types don’t care to toil in the second tier. To use a baseball analogy, why would top pitchers and hitters languish on the quaint fields of Louisville, Norfolk, and Columbus when they could go grande in places like Los Angeles, New York, and Chicago?

Take Leicester, for example, a club south of Sunderland. In the 2003-2004 season, Leicester fell from the Premiership to the second tier. A massive sell-off of talent ensued, and Leicester hasn’t finished higher than 15th in the second tier since. This year, there’s lurking danger of a calamitous plummet into the third division.

Sunderland’s Stadium of Light seats 49,000, and almost every seat is full as the Black Cats, in their old-school red-and-white-striped jerseys, emerge from the tunnel. The only block of unused seats is in the visitors’ section. Opposing fans are carefully segregated in England, part of the Sophisticated policing that helped curb the sorry hooliganism of the 1970s and’80s.

The facility itself is amazingly compact; the worst seat is still a great seat. As is the setup at most of the stadiums in this region, roofs cover the fans. Players may get soaked, but supporters are protected. Cold, perhaps, but dry.

“We’re on our way! We’re on our way!” The chant, which heralds the Black Cats’ years-ago climb into top-division glory, uncoils spontaneously about a half- dozen times before halftime.

But on this day, all isn’t glorious early. The beloved “Keano” and his men seem a tad wobbly, although they do manage to score just before the break.

Alcohol is permitted at Sunderland’s 11-year-old stadium, but only in the concourse. So the cramped inner ring teems at half time as fans nervously watch the scoreboard for the results of other teams in relegation jeopardy. Today, everything is falling the Black Cats’ way: All fellow EPL strugglers are losing. The significance of that is hardly lost on the audience.

Still, Gordon McMurphy fidgets. Another lifelong Black Cats supporter, he frets over the possibility of a grim future in which Sunderland won’t be competing against the elite clubs in England, like Manchester United, Chelsea, and Liverpool, but instead will be treated to B-list players from coach class clubs.

At least, that’s what it sounds like he’s saying. The din of anxious conversation in the concourse and his thick accent make his words difficult to collect. No matter. There’s only shouting, not talking, as Daryl Murphy’s second-half goal seals the Black Cats’ 2– 0 victory and pushes Wigan to the brink of the relegation zone.

The home team’s chant, “We’re on our way! We’re on our way!” is now more of an alert to the pub owners that fans are headed their way to lift pints and revel in victory.

And it looks like there will be more of the same to come. This fabulous February day sparks a tidy little run that leaves the Black Cats in dandy shape to retain their Premiership post. The forecast, for one more season at least, is sunny in Sunderland, as the club has done just enough to keep its cherished seat at the king’s table in English soccer.