Granit Xhaka might be leaving Sunderland. That sentence felt unthinkable three weeks ago — now it's the conversation nobody on Wearside wanted to have this summer.
Reports over the weekend suggest Xavi Alonso wants Xhaka at Chelsea to bring some seniority and composure to a young squad. The rumours were apparently floating around even before the final day of the season, though a Chelsea fan consulted at the time dismissed it as clickbait. It doesn't feel like clickbait anymore.
The reaction in fan circles has apparently been fierce, much of it aimed at Xhaka's emotional post-match words after the Chelsea game — the stuff about loving the club, feeling at home, getting what Sunderland is about. But there's no real contradiction there. He probably meant every word of it. Circumstances change. He said similar things about Bayer Leverkusen before leaving them too.
This isn't a betrayal — it's just business
Xhaka is 33, turns 34 in September, and Chelsea are reportedly offering serious money for a return to London. Last summer he could likely have taken a bigger offer and chose the Sunderland challenge instead. He delivered. He helped the club exceed expectations in their first Premier League season back. That's the full transaction right there — nobody owes anyone anything beyond that.
The more useful question isn't whether he's leaving, it's whether Sunderland were already planning for life without him. It's entirely plausible that conversations had already taken place about reducing his minutes with European football added to the schedule, or that a replacement was already being lined up. The recruitment team has earned enough trust to suggest they're not scrambling.
Replacing him won't be straightforward. He set the tempo for how this team pressed and recycled possession all season. But the alternative — waiting another twelve months and losing him for nothing — isn't obviously better. If Chelsea are paying market rate for a player entering the final stretch of his career, Sunderland take the money and move on.
Meanwhile, the Elvis kit happened
While the Xhaka noise was building, Sunderland also announced an official collaboration with the Elvis Presley estate for their new kit. Which is not a sentence that would have made any sense during the deckchair-stripe relegation years or the sponsor-label-peeling-off-at-launch era.
Like it or loathe it aesthetically, the point of it isn't really the shirt. It's the signal. Sunderland are now a club that can attract international commercial partnerships and put Europa League badges on their sleeves in the same summer. That combination starts to shift how the club registers in markets like the US, where someone picking a Premier League team to follow might now land on Sunderland before Wolves or Brentford.
The big clubs — United, Liverpool, Arsenal — have always used brand profile to stay ahead commercially regardless of where they finish. Sunderland are clearly trying to build something similar, and the Elvis deal, however niche it sounds, is part of that logic.
The World Cup is basically a Sunderland audition tape
The EFL Trophy draw has also come and gone — Accrington Stanley, Salford City, and Sheffield Wednesday in the group, the latter a club Sunderland only edged past in the League One play-off semi-finals four years ago. Sharp reminder of how quickly things move.
But the bigger summer window into next season is the World Cup, where Sunderland are currently outscoring PSG in terms of goals from their players. Wilson Isidor hit what might be the goal of the tournament so far. Nilson Angulo scored a screamer against Germany. Xhaka is being Xhaka as Switzerland progress.
And then there's Brian Brobbey. The football the Netherlands have played recently has been some of the best of the tournament, and Brobbey is central to it — holding up play, finishing from tight angles, giving teammates options they didn't have before. Watching him at this level offers a clearer picture of what Sunderland's attack could look like next season, and frankly it's encouraging. The worry, as always, is fatigue and injury risk running deep into a tournament. But if he comes back fit, Sunderland's Europa League odds look considerably more interesting than they did in May.
