Martin O'Neill: 'Sunderland will play in the Champions League one day'

Former boss Martin O'Neill certainly still appears to love Sunderland.

Martin O’Neill has predicted that Sunderland will play Champions League football one day, and it’s what the supporters deserve.

O’Neill managed Sunderland for 15 months between 2011 and 2013 and delivered some very memorable times, although his tenure was ultimately a failure.

He has released a new book, 'On Days Like These,’ and has been discussing his affiliation with Sunderland a lot as part of a promotional tour. And, despite how it ended for him on Wearside, he clearly still has an awful lot of affection for the club he supported as a boy.

"For a team that can go from 16,000 people to 47,000 almost overnight shows you there is a heart about the football club that will always exist," O'Neill told the Chronicle. "Even watching the other afternoon, when they beat Millwall, you see the crowd at the game.

"It's just waiting. One of these decades, Sunderland is going to be playing in the Champions League. It might not be in my lifetime, but it will be something that I genuinely believe Sunderland fans deserve."

While things didn’t work out in the end for Martin O’Neill in his time as Sunderland manager, his own roots of supporting the club are well documented.

He has explained in the past about choosing Sunderland because of Charlie Hurley, but in the end he felt the club reflected him and his upbringing in the most ‘appropriate’ way imaginable.

"I was at boarding school and you weren't allowed radios," he said in 2012. "My mother got me a little crystal set to listen to the last bits of the game. There I was listening in, it got to the last bit and it said, 'It's been a terrible night for Sunderland.' That's great, and I think we had taken the lead as well.

"Just then the dean walked in and lifted my crystal set and I got slaps in the morning. It was the night they got beaten 5-1 at Leeds Road against Manchester United in the [1964] FA Cup quarter-final second replay."

“If I could change my life I'd like to change the way I grew up. I just think it's the Irish background thing. Disaster is around the corner. It is, it's lurking, it's incredibly negative. Am I thinking about the bad times ahead? Jesus, no. I've got to remain positive, I'm going to have to fight this negativity.

"That's probably why I'm a Sunderland fan, absolutely, I couldn't have chosen a more appropriate club. That was my upbringing, supporting Sunderland and getting my crystal set nicked."

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