Diego Costa will appear at the Stadium of Light on Monday as Sunderland bring their Wearside Legends Game to Wearside, with the former Chelsea and Atletico Madrid forward named in Team Ronaldinho for Ronaldinho & Friends v Defoe & UK Icons. The match is scheduled to kick off at five pm on 25 May, one day after Sunderland’s final Premier League match against Chelsea.
The addition of Costa gives the fixture another familiar face with a serious record. He won two Premier League titles and the League Cup with Chelsea, and lifted La Liga, the Europa League and the UEFA Super Cup with Atletico Madrid. Sunderland had already announced earlier this year that Ronaldinho would headline on Wearside, turning the game into a showcase built around one of football’s great entertainers.
Ronaldinho’s side is already packed with names that will be well known to supporters on Wearside. Gilberto Silva, Maicon, Douglas Costa, Philippe Coutinho, Ramires, Kleberson and Nwankwo Kanu are all listed, along with former Sunderland striker Djibril Cisse and ex-loanee Nicklas Bendtner. Defoe’s UK Icons team brings its own local links, with Kevin Phillips, Steven Fletcher, Lee Cattermole, Phil Bardsley, Danny Collins and Pascal Chimbonda all named, alongside Heurelho Gomes, Michael Dawson, Jermaine Pennant, Aaron Lennon, Sandro and Shaun Wright-Phillips.
Owners Kyril Louis-Dreyfus and Juan Sartori, together with director of football Florent Ghisolfi, are also set to be involved in the showpiece. That puts the club’s leadership on the same stage as a line-up of former internationals and ex-Sunderland players, giving the occasion a club-wide feel rather than a simple exhibition match.
The tension in the event is that it arrives with the season still in full view, just one day after Sunderland’s final league fixture, but it is also clearly designed to be more than a celebration of nostalgia. Ronaldinho, who won the Ballon d’Or in 2005 and the World Cup in 2002, remains the draw, while Defoe anchors the UK Icons side with a squad that mixes Premier League names and Sunderland favourites. For the club, the game is a chance to turn a late-May weekend into a statement occasion, and the crowd at the Stadium of Light will decide whether the billing matches the ambition.
