Sunderland returned to Championship action last weekend as Tony Mowbray's side came back with a bang by beating Millwall 3-0 at the Stadium of Light.

It was a win that lifted the club up to tenth in the second division table and the Black Cats are now preparing to face West Brom at home next Monday.

Between now and then, some Sunderland supporters may have their attention focused on another team - England. The Three Lions face France in the quarter-finals of the 2022 World Cup in Qatar on Saturday.

Should Gareth Southgate's side make their way to the final of the competition then they will be in action just one day after the club's clash with Hull City.

Sunderland do not have any players still in action in the tournament, after Jewison Bennette and Bailey Wright were sent home, but once upon a time, they could have had one of the best to ever grace the World Cup - the late Diego Maradona.

In the documentary ‘Bring me the Head of Maradona,’ via SI, biographer Daniel Arcucci revealed that the Black Cats attempted to sign the legendary attacking midfielder during the infancy of his playing career at Argentinos Juniors.

“The first offer that Maradona received was from England’s Sunderland in 1977 and Maradona wanted to go.

“He said ‘If they don’t sell me to Sunderland, I’m retiring’. At that time we didn’t have a democratic government and they declared him untransferable, one of a group of players who were untransferable.”

This turned out to be a transfer nightmare, albeit through no fault of their own, for Jimmy Adamson's Black Cats as the Argentine wizard went on to become one of the all-time greats, particularly in a World Cup setting.

Maradona, who scored 115 goals in 257 games for Napoli at club level in his career, won one World Cup title across four editions of the tournament.

Brazilian legend Zico previously hailed the midfielder as the greatest of his time, saying: "In my generation, my era, he was simply the best. I saw Maradona do things that God himself would doubt were possible.

"He always had someone marking him, he always had someone hanging on to him, and yet he could still always conjure up wonderful pieces of magic. A genius.”

He was at the peak of his powers in the 1986 World Cup as he racked up a stunning five goals and five assists in seven appearances as Argentina went on to beat West Germany in the final.

The footballing great graced the World Cup stage over the course of a number of years and he could have been a Sunderland player during one of those tournaments, had they been able to snap him up in 1977. Instead, he went on to join Boca Juniors in 1981 and the rest, as they say, was history...