Captain Lorik Cana digs into his new club’s past

Oct 27 2009 by Stuart Rayner, The Journal

Lorik Cana loves history so much, he wants to write himself into Sunderland’s. Stuart Rayner meets a man on a mission.

NOT many professional footballers list archaeology among their interests, but Lorik Cana is not your ordinary professional footballer.

The multi-lingual Kosovo-born Albanian international is fascinated by the subject and a keen student of early Middle Ages history.

You do not have to go quite so far back to find the last time Sunderland Football Club lifted a major trophy, but his interest in the past means Cana is acutely aware it has been a generation – an eternity in sporting terms.

Tonight’s League Cup tie with Aston Villa offers a perfect opportunity to bury the demons.

Continuing their impressive home form against Martin O’Neill’s team will be no easy task, but do so and the Black Cats will earn a place in the quarter-finals of a competition many Premier League sides take lightly.

Ask most footballers about the history of their clubs and you will be lucky if they can go as far back as the day they joined.

Some managers positively despise what they see as a millstone around their necks.

It was not until Roy Keane appeared three years ago that the Stadium of Light tunnel was decorated with photographs of past glories.

Keane caught the mood which saw the Black Cats embrace their history under the leadership of one of its notable figures, striker-turned-chairman Niall Quinn.

Where previous regimes cold-shouldered them, Quinn has practically beatified the team which won the 1973 FA Cup final, an achievement they are still waiting to match.